Took a little bit of break cause the Halloween season, but I'm back on the Road to Ice Age: Boiling Point. But before I get into the review I'd like to apologize for uploading this so late. Now I was planning on uploaded this at 9pm (or 6pm if you go by Pacific time). However I was feeling tired and decided on taking a nap thinking my alarm would wake me up. Problem is I set the time but I didn't set the actually alarm clock sound...oops. So once again, I'm sorry for uploading this so late.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is an animated adventure comedy and the third film in the franchise. It was produced by 20th Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios with 20th Century Fox once again being the distributor. Carlos Saldanha directed while Michael Berg, Peter Ackerman, Mike Reiss, Yoni Brenner, and Jason Carter Eaton wrote the screenplay & story.
The story is, it's been twenty-two months since the events of the second movie and Manny and Ellie are expecting a child. But this isn't the only change that's happening. Diego is thinking about leaving The Herd because he feels like he's losing his hunter instincts and with a combination of Manny & Ellie getting ready for parenthood & Diego leaving, Sid is feeling anxious he'll be abandoned. To fill this anxiety Sid adopts three supposedly abandoned eggs which turn into baby T-Rexes. Soon the T-Rex mother takes both Sid & her children to a subterranean lost world populated by dinosaurs. Now, The Herd comes together once again to rescue Sid and bring him home.
- Negatives
I've got nothing.
- Mix
The only mix bag is the story. Now the adventure through the dinosaur underground is actually pretty fun in both terms of action and humor. But where things don't feel quite right is character arcs. They've got good ideas and themes going for them. Manny being nervous about being father again after what happened to his last family, Diego having an identity crisis, and Sid feeling as though he won't have a place anymore once things start changing. It's all good stuff, but those story arcs didn't really get that much attention. A lot of the times those arcs take a backseat for the more adventurous elements. Because of that you almost forget some of these guys had story arcs to begin with. So we got was an uneven balance of character work and action.
- Positives
Now I'm gonna keep these next three praises as short as possible because a lot of it is repeats of my previous praises for the last two movies. One praise I'll give is the pacing. While the quality doesn't reach pure perfection, at least the third film continues the tradition of these movies not over staying their welcome.
Then there's the animation. We know the animators can do ice settings so it was nice to see Blue Sky challenge themselves doing a setting fit for dinosaurs and they did a great job. The dinos have get details on them and they move with lots of dynamic motions. Then there's the underground world the dinosaurs live in. It's a visual highlight. It's very tropical so you get a lot of beautiful colors, great set pieces, and a large scope.
The last thing I'll praise is the voice acting. The familiar cast consisting of Romano, Leary, Leguizamo still have good chemistry. Meanwhile Queen Latifah continues to be entertaining as Ellie and Seann William Scott and Josh Peck are also still funny as Crash and Eddie. But I gotta give it Simon Pegg as the new character for this movie, Buck aka "Buck Wild". Pegg brings out Buck's oddball eccentric personality to a great degree. Not to mention he nails a lot of Buck's quotable lines. I still to this day can't get that bit of Buck being married to an ugly pineapple out of my head. And that's primarily because of Pegg's hilarious delivery.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is another good entry to the franchise despite character arcs sometimes not getting the focus they needed.
My final rating is, Good.
That's all for now. Come back on Thursday, Nov 5th, for my A Look Back at review of the 2003 movie, The Cat in the Hat. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.