Nearing Extinction
posted on Thursday, July 02, 2009 in Movie Reviews
It’s always a little suspect when any franchise enters a third installment. A cursory look at film history will show you that a good third film is a tremendously rare occurrence, what few examples there are coming from franchises with an overarching storyline. Generally speaking, third movies are the ones where they’ve run out of ideas, written themselves into corners stemming from the idea of actually concluding the previous installments. And so, Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs runs into that very problem, offering no problems left for their characters to overcome, before whisking them away to a completely different world just so that they have something to do. While fun at times, and certainly an easy distraction for children, this middling animated entry feels largely unnecessary. We join the characters having established a peaceful status quo. Manny the Mammoth (Ray Romano) is going nuts over the prospect of becoming a father, while his mate Ellie (Queen Latifah) tries to stay a little more levelheaded about it. Diego the sabertooth tiger (Dennis Leary) thinks he’s losing his edge staying with all the docile animals, and contemplates leaving. Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo) picks up a family of his own after finding three eggs buried underground. He tries to raise them, only to discover they’re dinosaur eggs. The dinosaur mother appears one day to take back her kids, dragging Sid along with them to a hidden underground world untouched by the ice age. Manny and the gang venture into this lost world to get back their friend.
The first half of the film isn’t very good. The problem is that these characters have already made their journey, and have reached a point where their stories just aren’t going anywhere. Case in point, the three original main characters appear to be going through midlife crises, which feels like a rather strange subject for a children’s movie. Things do pick up in the second half, when the movie decides to become a straightforward adventure movie instead. The introduction of Buck, played by Simon Pegg, is very welcome, providing new elements that these characters appear to have out grown. The movie does look pretty good, a very large step up from the previous installment. Especially in the second half, where the movie kicks things up a gear, offering up a couple of frenetic sequences that really showcase the storytelling ability of the animators. They also pull out some of the cleverest bits in the second half, like an inspired, absurd montage sequence featuring a heartbroken acorn and a rewritten Gilbert O’Sullivan song. I’m not entirely sold on how 3D is used in this movie, but I’m sure the kids will enjoy the novelty.
The main voice cast remains the same, and they do the same job they did in the previous installments. It’s all fine, though not particularly inspired. The big addition is Simon Pegg, playing Buck as a crazed adventurer from the days of yore. Pegg’s performance is just plain fantastic, playing up the insanity of the character while still holding on to a sliver of humanity that adds a lot of dimension to the role.
Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs isn’t all that bad, really, but the standards for animated films nowadays are pretty high. Over the last decade, animated films have provided some of the most well crafted stories to ever reach a cinema, and while this movie does provide a few thrills in the second, the overall narrative doesn’t really feel like it’s worth the journey. If you’re a fan of the franchise, you’re still going to get a kick out of seeing these characters, and kids will probably still have a good time. But it’s a definitely a middling experience.
My Rating:
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