Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Cert PG) Review by TIM LINCE – 2/5 stars Thoughts Before I remember earlier this decade when the original Ice Age was released. A teaser trailer came out that seemed genuinely original and hilarious. The small creature

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Cert PG)



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Review by TIM LINCE - 2/5 stars

Thoughts Before

I remember earlier this decade when the original Ice Age was released.

A teaser trailer came out that seemed genuinely original and hilarious. The small creature embedding an acorn into a snowy landscape, so diligently and intent, only to create a massive ice collapse - the trailer ending, so coolly, with Vanilla Ice's classic 'Ice Ice Baby'.

The buzz that created, wow, if I had been a few years younger then it would have seemed like the Holy Grail. It seemed like the Toy Story for the next generation.

It's just a shame it turned out relatively bland and didn't have anything near the spark the Pixar movies retain. Not that it was bad necessarily; it just had too little laughs and a paper thin and uninteresting plot.

Production company Blue Sky Studios recently hit CGI gold though, with the hilarious Horton Hears A Who, so maybe they've learnt the lesson of the past and, like a good wine, aged and developed well.

And now, nearly a decade after the original the third one is here.

Directed by Carlos Saldanha, who also directed the previous two and other CGI flop Robots, and retaining the same vocal cast (refreshingly full of non-celebrities) it looks like it's going to be much of the same.

Even the trailer follows much the same format as the first!

Thoughts Afterwards

I only just managed to sit through those 90 minutes of pure mediocrity.

I think it clicked about 20 minutes in that the jokes were very rarely going to hit home, that the storyline was a drawn out mess and features character sub-plots that neither adults or children would find entertaining.

Case one, for the latter point, is the ridiculous driving home of the woolly mammoth's impending parenthood. A child will not understand the importance and significance of having a child, and more importantly find nothing to relate to within that, and a parent will probably just get a little annoyed at the attitudes of both mother and father figure.

I'm really not sure what happened here. None of the characters are particularly likeable at all; no-one was rooting for anyone (to be honest the coolest character was probably the big bad enemy). Even the adorable little Scrat's acorn adventure began to grind by the end. So the convoluted plot, involving finding some weird underground dinosaur haven, really left nothing to be desired at all.

Animation wise it felt dated already. This is probably because it does look very similar to the 2002 debut and revealed nothing new or groundbreaking to suggest they've used anything other than the original template. The action sequences were a treat on the big screen, whereas the 3D was a plus at times and did make those effect-heavy scenes especially good.

It's just a huge shame the dialogue was just so absolutely bland. I'm pretty sure I didn't hear a proper laugh during the whole film. Yes, there were a few ripples of guffaw - the same you'd utter when someone reads out a cracker joke - but nothing to rival a good Pixar or Dreamworks animation. It seemed decidedly second rate in fact, especially when compared to the obviously superior recent hits Bolt and Monsters vs. Aliens.

So is Ice Age: Dawn Of Dinosaurs the cure to cool off the kids in the summer heat? I really don't think it is... unless they were mental fans of the first two then there is little to see here at all. Failed jokes, drab animation, an emotionless script and (hopefully) the end of a series that wasn't particularly special anyway.