Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs - review

The other movie we went to see Friday night was Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. It was, in fact, the first movie we saw, so we had a nice palette-cleanser before the main course of action and big, cool robots and violence. We hadn't seen the first two Ice Age movies before, so none of the characters were familiar to us at first.

With the beginning of the movie starting very domestically, I was beginning to wonder if that was a bad thing. The two woolly mammoths, Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) are beginning their life of domestic bliss, with Ellie being pregnant and Manny being the overprotective father who's trying to do all the right things for his wife. The sabertooth tiger, Diego (Dennis Leary) thinks it's time to move on, but he's slowing down himself. The beginning of the movie is very slow, re-establishing the characters and getting us used to them again. When Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo) tries to become a parent by "rescuing" some Tyrannosaur eggs and then being taken by the mother down into another world, the rest of the characters have to go rescue them.

This is when the movie really gets good, and makes it worth seeing. Simon Pegg literally steals the movie as Buck, the slightly deranged weasel who helps them all in their bid to rescue Sid. He's frickin' hilarious in this movie and it really takes off once he's in the picture. The rest of the characters and jokes are good, but not always great. But Buck? Almost every line out of his mouth is a gem. The two possums are also great. I do have to say that the two squirrels and their relentless conflict over the perfect acorn was funny for a while, but it started to get old after a while. They did make for some creative sequences, though.

The 3-D effects are wonderful, not going out of their way to amaze you but instead immersing you in the world that's been created. Very similar to Up in that respect. The dinosaur world beneath is lush with vegetation, but what I was most impressed with was the hair on some of the animals. It moves and flows, making the effort to animate it seem easy (despite the fact that I know it wasn't).

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is good, light entertainment fare, perfect for the kiddies, or for those adults who just want to be a kid for an hour and a half.