The third instalment of Blue Sky Studio’s mega-successful prehistoric romps is aimed squarely at the under-12’s and there is no faulting the innate understanding that director Carlos Saldahna and creator/producer Chris Wedge have of their target audience. Their film is brimming with colour, cute baby animals, some rousing adventure, dabs of harmless cheekiness and the series trademark 'all-for-one’ message.
Accompanying grown-ups will derive most joy from watching their young 'uns react to the film, because very little onscreen engages (or is meant to engage) the more mature viewer.
Woolly mammoth Manny (Ray Romano) is about to become a daddy, with his loved one Ellie (Queen Latifah). This plot device provides added character impetus for those audience members that remember the first Ice Age film, in which it was revealed Manny’s first family was killed by cavemen. That film was released in 2002, so it could be argued that many audience members here for #3 had not been born when the first film did $550million+ worldwide, but it's a safe bet they've seen it, since the Ice Age series has had an enormous afterlife on DVD (cynics would argue that’s why there is a #3, but there is no room for smart-aleckyness here.)
By Manny’s side, as always, is the bumbling sloth Sid (John Leguizamo), starting to feel on the outer as Manny focuses on family life, and the aging sabre-tooth tiger Diego (Dennis Leary), who yearns for the nomadic life of a true hunter. Dealing with sagging predatorial mojo, Diego cops a roasting from a gazelle (Bill Hader) that outruns the big cat’s attack, in one of the film’s comedic highlights.
Sid’s need for his own family ties is satiated when he stumbles upon three large eggs, which he adopts as his own. When the eggs hatch, the serene mammalian environment of the Ice Age becomes home to three adorable but destructive Tyranosaur cubs. Bent on retrieving her offspring, the baby’s natural mother – a hulking, slobbering monster who returns them to their tropical subterranean home – leads the mostly-fearless trio, with Ellie and opossum buddies Crash (Sean William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck) in tow, on a search for Sid, who has stayed by his adopted dino-babies side.
Dinosaurs in the Ice Age? Subterranean rainforests? Mammoths and sabre-tooths living with brachiosaurs and velociraptors? Okay, so the science of Ice Age 3 doesn’t really hold up, but at this stage you’ve probably had a good laugh at the talking elephant and the snow-boarding sloth, so best not to play the evolutionary card now.
The one element of Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs that will enthral the adult viewer is the application of Real-D 3D enhancement (in selected theatres). Used to stunning affect in some key action sequences – a pterodactyl flight is dizzying in its execution - Saldahna and Wedge have also explored the subtle artistry this new age of three-dimensional cinema should represent. Sunlight refracted through ice; the ever-more intricate realism of fur and feathers; a snowflake. Yes, there are the to-be-expected slobbering-snouts and tumbling-rocks that are designed to make the kids reach out or shrink back, but there is also depth and detail and pure delight in the film’s images.
And it wouldn’t be an Ice Age film without the ongoing adventures of Scrat (voiced by Wedge himself) and his endless quest for that elusive acorn. Always the comic highlight (as is evident by his use to sell the film’s trailer, again), this time around he finds love to the strains of Lou Rawls' 'You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine'.
It is a pop-culture nod in a film that generally doesn’t go down the hip, ironic, self-conscious path of films such as Shrek’s 1-3. Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs doesn’t care if the parents get the joke or not – this ones doin’ it for the kids.
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