Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Fox Animation may be languishing well behind Dreamworks, Aardman, Disney and Pixar as far as brand recognition goes, but the popular Ice Age franchise and last year’s hit Horton Hears a Who! suggests that the studio is doing something right.

Subtitled “Dawn of the Dinosaurs” (nonsensically: it’s set after their supposed extinction), Ice Age 3 is strictly surplus to all natural storytelling requirements. Make no mistake, it only exists because the accountants demanded it. But every studio needs to exploit its cash-cows, and it takes real craftsmanship (if not necessarily artistry) to do so well.

In 2002, the first Ice Age movie was a kind of anthropomorphized Three Men And A Baby, although you could trace its roots further back, to the John Ford-John Wayne western Three Godfathers (itself a remake of a silent picture from 1916) in which a trio of bankrobbers accidentally inherited an infant.

In the animated version, a sloth (Sid), a woolly mammoth (Manny) and a saber tooth tiger (Diego) are thrown together by circumstance and the discovery of a mewling human baby. Putting aside their differences (and Diego’s natural inclination to eat the kid), they embarked on a risky journey to restore him to his people.

Come 2006’s Ice Age: The Meltdown Manny was meeting cute with a mate, Ellie, who was under the misimpression that she was a possum; and the strange herd saved the entire valley from a potentially devastating flood.

In Dawn of the Dinosaurs Ellie is with child, Manny is thoroughly domesticated, Diego is hearing the call of the wild and klutzy, addle-brained Sid is feeling broody… So much so that when he happens to stumble across three seemingly abandoned eggs, he adopts them as his own. The babies that emerge all have big teeth and appetites to match, but Sid is not discouraged until an angry T Rex comes to reclaim them and leads him down to a subterranean “lost valley” of the dinosaurs. Needless to say, Sid’s pals decide they must follow…

After a lachrymose start that belabours the fissures threatening the friendship of the three males, Ice Age 3 soon reverts to the frantic pace of its predecessors. Underground (a much more verdant and colourful environment than you might expect), Sid and his friends separately face one perilous adventure after another.

With their breathless concentration on high-stakes action – intermingled with a few choice wisecracks – these movies are really a throwback to the Looney Tunes shorts that came out of Warner Bros’ “Termite Row” in the 1940s and 50s: it’s safe to say that Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner would be up to speed in this company (and Bugs Bunny would probably crash their repartee).

The franchise even has its own supporting short – albeit loosely integrated into the main feature – in the shape of a running gag about a mute squirrel, Scrat, and his fruitless attempts to hold on to an elusive acorn. In this installment, his struggles are complicated by the arrival of a female squirrel, who is both a rival for the nut and a distraction in her own right.

Of course the Looney Tunes shorts didn’t have to sustain our interest for 94 minutes, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs struggles to find room to develop each of what is now a lengthy cast of characters. Diego (voiced by Denis Leary) and Manny (Everybody Loves Raymond star Ray Romano) are left fighting over the scraps in a script which doles out perfunctory character arcs like goodie bags at a children’s party: everyone gets one but there’ll be a landfill by morning.

Meanwhile the irritatingly immature and idiotic Sid (perennial supporting player John Leguizamo) gets the lion’s share of the dramatic focus and the comedy bragging rights.

More accurately, he splits most of the screen time with yet another character, a one-eyed weasel named Buck who serves as a guide to the land of the dinosaurs. Voiced by Simon Pegg, Buck is a reckless adventurer likely modeled on Shrek 2’s scene-stealing Puss In Boots.

Buck is an engagingly eccentric fellow – evidently out of his mind and often not dead wrong in the leadership department. The filmmakers seem in two minds themselves about whether to keep him on hand for a potential third sequel, but the truth is the next Ice Age needs less characters, more story. There is enough wit and technical acumen on display to keep part three moving along briskly, but take a step back and you can see the series is running on a treadmill. It can’t go much faster before it falls flat.

Tom Charity

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