REVIEW: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Rated: PG
Runtime: 94 minutes
Starring: Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary.
My rating: 1 stars
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A word of caution: I researched this film after I saw it because I didn’t notice a writer’s credit. I found no results. My conclusion: Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is so mediocre that no one will own up to writing it.
Perhaps it was co-director Mike Thurmeier. He helped write the original with nine others. Maybe that’s why there wasn’t a writer’s credit – all of Hollywood conspired against the American public to write a truly wretched film.
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And now a pause for a conversation I imagine happened:
Panel of conniving writers (In unison): We’ve got the next Ice Age film!
Moronic Hollywood executive (Dollar symbols flashing in his eyes): Oh, yeah? What’s it called?
Panel of conniving writers: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs!
Moronic Hollywood executive: Wait, didn’t the Ice Age occur after dinosaurs went extinct?
Anonymous writer on panel (Rubbing is hands together evilly): I have an answer for that, boss. We’ll just tell the kids the dinosaurs live UNDER the ice, and we’ll have that stupid, little sloth fall through the ice to find it. Muhahahhaha
Moronic Hollywood executive: Muhahahahhahaha. Excellent. Kids are stupid.
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Ok I’m back.
Which character do you remember most from Ice Age and Ice Age: The Meltdown? If you answered “Sid the sloth” then you will really hate this movie. For me, he’s the only remotely likable one in the herd of misfit mammals.
Manny (Ray Romano), the mammoth, spends the whole film whining and just being annoying because Ellie (Queen Latifah) is pregnant and about to burst. She also whines for much of the film.
Diego (Denis Leary), the saber tooth tiger, is getting old and lonely and can’t chase down his prey any longer. Other than that, the character shows no growth in any direction from the second film.
The possum brothers, Eddie (Josh Peck) and Crash (Sean William Scott) are not funny and seem to be slowly going insane.
Sid (John Leguizamo) is again loveable, wonderful and funny, and we just can’t help but feel for him. But the writers decide not to make him the central part of the story. Well, he sort of is but not really.
He wants to be a parent. He falls through the ice one day and finds three dinosaur eggs. He, of course, doesn’t know they are dinosaur eggs and takes them up to the ice age to care for them until they hatch. When they do, he sees baby tyrannosaurus rexes. They see him as “Mommy.” All is well until the real mother climbs up through the ice hole and takes the babies and Sid with her back to the dinosaurs. Which, again, is UNDERGROUND! And the sun is shinning.
So the rest of the herd must go retrieve him, plunging to the depths of the Cretaceous Period in the process. They enlist the help of Buck (Simon Pegg), a ferret-looking thing, who long ago discovered the dinosaur world and has lived amongst them ever since.
On and on it goes without humor, intelligence, a good plot or character development. There were breaks in the action, however, to show us the squirrel – the one from all the trailers that is always after the acorn – meeting and fighting with a female squirrel over the damn nut.
Those scenes were quite good, actually. But then they’re interrupted by the movie.
Don’t worry, though, Mr. Moronic Hollywood Executive, you’ve got millions upon millions of dollars headed your way. “Kids are stupid,” as you said in my imaginary conversation. My question to you is, “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” I am, and this movie angered me. One star.
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Where it's playing:
Canton/PotsdamSHOWTIMES
Watertown SHOWTIMES
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