Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs Reviews

This film disappointed me. I'm a fan of animated films, but this provided few thrills and the storyline was very slow and pointless. Perhaps it was the little kids in the cinema who were constantly saying "That wasn't funny" and shutting down every single joke that made me realise that this film doesn't even work for young children and the humour was predictable and only rarely put a smile on my face. It had its moments, but overall I thought this was a bore.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but since I have a weak spot for the first installment, I thought I might as well check it out (I even saw it the movie theater with my step-son). First of all, I really enjoyed the first Ice Age movie but, honestly, who would have thought that it would become such a huge franchise?!? By now, they have made 4 installments, all really successful, and they are already working on a 5th one. Personally, I could have done without the sequels but there are not that bad and rather enjoyable especially if you have some low expectations. The other interesting thing about this flick is that it was also the first movie I saw in 3D just when the whole 3D hype started. Eventually, I thought that the 3D effect was not bothering but it was also not mind-blowing either. Eventually, it seemed more like a good excuse to make you pay even more for your theater tickets and, since then, I try to avoid all 3D flicks (if possible) and watch instead the 2D versions. To conclude, even though it was nothing really amazing, it remains a decent watch and, if you enjoyed the previous Ice Age installments, you will definitely enjoy this one as well.

Look, these are my kids! And you're gonna have to go through me to get them!

Who would've thunk that Sid would end up having three baby T-Rexes as his kids? Well, it doesn't really come as a surprise, since Sid IS a little.. addled. :)) In the third installment of the Ice Age series, the herd faces dissension, especially when Ellie (voiced by Latifah) and Manny (voiced by Romano) are about to start a family of their own. Diego (voiced by Leary) feels a little out of the loop, and after unsuccessfully trying to catch a leaping gazelle, feels like he's losing his touch. He decides to leave, and Sid (voiced by Leguizamo) decides that he wants to have a family as well. When he falls through a crack in the ice, he discovers three huge eggs which he then takes and passes off as his own. The next day, the eggs hatch, and we find that these were actually T-Rex eggs! Mayhem immediately ensues, since the baby dinos end up trying to eat the other animals. When Sid's "kids" end up wrecking the playground Manny prepared for his baby, Manny becomes furious and tells Sid to bring the dinos back from where they came from. Unfortunately, the real mother of the baby dinos comes looking for her babies, and when Sid tries to defend them, the mother T-Rex takes Sid and the three baby dinos down the crack in the ice. Manny, Ellie, Crash (voiced by William Scott), Eddie (voiced by Peck), and eventually, Diego, follow the T-Rex into another world - one where Manny ends up "feeling puny". They have entered the dinosaur world, many miles below their icy domain. They meet a cocky, dino-world savvy weasel named Buck (voiced by Pegg), who helps them navigate the strange terrain in order to save Sid.
Just like the two films before it, Ice Age 3 delivers a knockout in terms of humour, friendship, loyalty, and all those virtues which are important in life. More laughs (especially from Sid's end), and watch out for Scratte, a female version of Scrat, who is also after the same acorn. ;)

I was really nervous about seeing this one because the timeline of the story was a bit wrong but it made sense in the end. In real-life, dinosaurs really liked millions of years before the Ice Age. In this film, the dinosaurs still lived but was underneath the Ice Age living underneath in a different world. Also, because I find Ice Age very similar to Shrek. I hated the third Shrek film so I was hoping that I wouldn't hate Ice Age 3. When I saw it, I absolutely loved it!! It stayed in exactly the same place as far as kind of humour is concerned. I have to say that this is the funniest of the trilogy but doesn't have the best story of the trilogy. Ice Age 3 is such a clever film to watch with the very childish dialogue. This film literally made me laugh so much that it really hurt. That feeling is really great and really horrible at the same time. This one had a lot of clever human sceneries in it like the little Ice Age playground and the "mummy" moments when it comes to Sid. This film literally cracked me up! The experience of watching this film in 3D was an absolute delight as was watching Coraline in 3D too.


Manny and the gang are back! Manny and Ellie are having a baby and they have a lot of things against them first for them to be a happy family. Manny is preparing the best he can to be a father but has to get through Sid first. Sid becomes more annoying than ever in this one which makes me laugh the most about him. Sid is almost exactly the same kind of character as Donkey from Shrek. Sid is my favourite character from the film and is one of my favourite animated characters of all time! Diego is in a awkward situation due to Ellie's pregnancy and that he doesn't feel like being part of a family. Scrat is after the nut once again but new character Scraté is after it as well. Scrat becomes involved with Manny, Sid, Diego, Ellie etc in quite a few scenes that are part of the story. New character Buck is a weasel who is a lot like Puss In Boots from Shrek. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah and Seann William Scott returned to voice Manny, Sid, Diego, Ellie, Crash and Eddie. Simon Pegg joins the cast in the third film as the voice of Buck.


Carlos Saldanha returns as director and did a great job once again as he did in the second film. The humour is just absolutely hilarious that isn't over the top and isn't too childish either. The humour is the one thing that makes Ice Age almost the same as Shrek. This one does teach about family and how powerful friendship and love really is. Ice Age 3 is a combination between two ages of the world that does look like a messed up timeline because the Ice Age was millions of years after the dinosaurs lived but it did make sense.


Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs is the funniest of the trilogy but it isn't the best. I like this one more than the first one but still prefer the second one. I have now decided that Ice Age is better than Shrek because I love all three Ice Age films but only love Shrek 1 and 2 because I hate Shrek The Third. This will be one of the best films of 2009 which doesn't really seem like a great year for cinema. Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs is an absolutely hilarious film that I would watch over and over again when it comes out on DVD.

"We've been living above an entire world, and we didn't even know it!"

As most movie-goers should be aware of, dinosaurs predated the mammals of the Ice Age series by millions of years. Thus, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (the third instalment of the now 7-year-old computer-animated franchise) has a few problems to overcome in order to justify the scaly and the furry sharing the screen. To solve this conundrum, the committee of writers have dug deep into the classic tomes of science fiction (such as the works of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs) to conceive an idea so ludicrous - an entire world existing beneath the icy ground of the Pleistocene Epoch - that it very nearly works. Of course, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a children's cartoon, and expecting it to be paleontologically accurate is rather imprudent. Nevertheless, if this small detail keeps coming to mind during the movie, it may be an indication that Fox has gone to the well one too many times with this franchise. Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a charming film, but it's more of an agreeable television event than a majestic animated feature.

Following the events of Ice Age: The Meltdown, Manny (Romano) and Ellie (Latifah) - the last two woolly mammoths on the planet - are expecting their first child. However the prospective new arrival has put a strain on the gang; sabre-toothed tiger Diego (Leary) fears domesticity will cause him to lose more of his edge as a hunter, while Sid the sloth (Leguizamo) realises the family dynamic could lead to his eventual exclusion. Depressed, Sid wishes for a family of his own, and stumbles upon a trio of dinosaur eggs that contain Tyrannosaurs Rexes which he decides to adopt. But once they hatch, their perturbed mother soon shows up to seize them...and takes Sid as well. So with Sid taken captive by a dinosaur who takes him to a lost world of dinosaurs under the ice, it's up to his motley group of mammal pals to rescue him - with a crazed weasel named Buck (Pegg) giving them a helping hand along the way.

Unfortunately, the story just feels like a thinly-veiled excuse to incorporate dinosaurs (presumably because they're popular with little boys). For the most part, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs plays out like a demo for the video game as it careens from one improbable action situation to the next. Mastering these sorts of challenges may be fun in an interactive video game, but they're dull and out-of-place in a movie. To the credit of the filmmakers, though, the picture doesn't strain itself to find a higher purpose, and the absence of responsibility permits the movie to have a bit of fun. The directorial duo of Carlos Saldanha and Mike Thurmeier therefore hand Dawn of the Dinosaurs over to the colourful locales, dangerous predators and the adorable infant dinosaur shenanigans. A sense of freshness is encouraged with the introduction of Buck; a comedic hunter with a leaf eye-patch who's been lurking solo in the lost world underneath the ice for several years. Buck is a splendid, off-the-wall sidekick who's integral to the narrative and pitched to entertain (instead of irritate), with Simon Pegg elevating the material with his endearing rendition of the character.

And of course, crowd favourite Scrat ("voiced" by series head-honcho Chris Wedge) shows up periodically throughout the film to liven things up. The buck-toothed, squirrel-like critter's incessant love for his acorn is continually put to the test; more so when he crosses paths with the femme-fatale of his species, affectionately known as Scrattè (Disher), who's rather a tough nut to crack. Their physical tussles over the acorn (which lead to them falling in love) provide welcome relief from the story proper, and remind us that well-executed slapstick comedy is always enjoyable. The Scrat/Scrattè interactions frankly make the rest of the movie look rather stale.

The previous Ice Age films maintained a consistent cleverness, and had only minimal reliance on television-grade jokes. But there's an overriding laziness haunting Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Hearing Ray Romano bitch about married life is out-of-place in this picture, as if the audio from Romano's former television program was recycled. On top of this, the plotline resembles that of a generic sitcom episode. The humour is half-baked, and hilarious moments are only occasional. The film often resorts to bathroom humour or relating to gender differences to get a laugh (for instance, what happens when you try to "milk" a male cow?). Most of the jokes couldn't be less relevant to what's happening as well. There's a bit of playful bantering between the characters from time to time as well as a selection of amusing vignettes, but once again these are infrequent. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs feels like it was assembled as quickly as possible before the franchise's target audience could outgrow the infantile protagonists.

Blue Sky Studios continue to operate strongly in the shadow of Pixar and DreamWorks, but this smaller enterprise needs to improve their techniques in order to compete in the animation realm. The look of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is disappointing, particularly with Pixar's Up being released in the same year. While the characters themselves are well-detailed, the world in which they operate is bland and generic.

With each new release, Pixar manages to expose deep issues and still create a highly enjoyable romp that appeals to viewers young and old. Meanwhile, Fox continues to milk franchises like Ice Age, and the result is surface-level fluff. Like the previous Ice Age films, Dawn of the Dinosaurs is enjoyable, but too formulaic, and creativity is slowly decreasing (who didn't predict the '80s one-hit wonder Walk the Dinosaur being used for the soundtrack?).

6.4/10

The best of the series! The newcomers are great! Buck is crazy and really cool and Peaches is soooo sweet! Oh, and I also loved the three little dino-babies! It's worth seeing!