*/****
screenplay by Michael Berg, Peter Ackerman, Yoni Brenner
directed by Carlos Saldanha
by Walter Chaw It's
not entirely accurate to say that I've hated the Ice Age
movies. They're not, after all, the Land Before Time
series, the post-classic Disney output just prior to the Pixar
revolution, or, heaven forefend, the Shrek trilogy.
No, better to say that the Ice Age franchise is at
worst merely the quintessence of inconsequence: they're films so bereft
of wit and vigour that their biggest crime isn't the constant shit and
hit routines, nor the predictable parade of unearned sentimentality,
but rather that they're as inert as the right side of the Periodic
Table. The message in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
(hereafter Ice Age 3)--that no matter what our
heroes look like on the outside (two mammoths, two opossums, a giant
sloth, a sabre-toothed tiger), on the inside, they're members of one
tribe--is the same as in the first two instalments, and by this time,
its constant mantric recitation begins to take on the air of unaware
self-parody. Of course, despite its incessant championing of a
non-traditional family unit, like Shrek, it still
has a mammoth (Manny (voiced by Ray Romano)) marry a mammoth (Ellie
(Queen Latifah)), leaving cross-species miscegenation, unlike the
otherwise execrable Madagascar sequel, to the
actors voicing them. What I wouldn't give for the same premise in
live-action with Romano married to Latifah, the latter morbidly
knocked-up and royally pissed-off.
For intrigue this go-round, add manic weasel Buck (Simon Pegg), who
lives in the centre of the Earth amongst dinosaurs and serves as the
guide for our erstwhile heroes when one of their number, Sid (John
Leguizamo), is abducted by the mother of the three tyrannosaur infants
he's adopted. Inexplicable subtexts about aging and the slow tick of
the biological clock are lifted half-heartedly and dropped with what
seems embarrassment and relief. Even the "Scrat" interstitials that
divide the franchise into still-interminable chunks here feature our
little nut-loving rodent going through an entire relationship cycle
with a doe-eyed Scrat-minx. It's all scored with Barry White, natch,
not because it means anything, but because it's funny to think of rats
fucking to soul music.
There's a lot about teamwork, a lot of stuff
with jumping around platforms and sliding down shit that'll port really
well to the videogame tie-in, and the birth of multiple babies that'll
have every kid (and idiot) in the audience cooing into their corn
syrup. But, curiously, as with the concurrent Up,
there's not a lot of imagination given its premise and, more, the
action sequences feel predictable and flaccid for it. The pacing of Ice
Age 3 is suitably glacial, the voice acting is exhausted, and
the plot points (one of them surrounding the destruction of a
playground, fer chrissakes) are so elderly that the best 3-D effect in
this 3-D craptavaganza would've been little puffs of grave-dirt and
cobwebs exploding out from every pronouncement. It's entertainment so
scrubbed of controversy and beholden to convention that even a carcass
presented for consumption jumps up, comically alive, to fly away, while
behind it a baby dinosaur dutifully regurgitates the animals (still
alive) it had a moment ago consumed. After the deadening bulk of it,
leave time for the awkward declarations of friendship and familial love
expressed all around when, truth is, continuing in this tribal union
means that the tiger and the sloth and the opossums remain childless
and mate-less, doomed to spend the rest of their extinctions in orbit
around the one-two sideshow of Romano and Latifah. All would be well if
the film were not also so interested in pushing a message of complacent
docility on its audience of youngsters who, whether they're getting
that intellectually, are expressing it through their drooping eyelids
and restlessness to flight. Beyond pointless, Ice Age 3
advocates cud-chewing and glassy-eyed platitudes; the biggest surprise
is that it wasn't released directly to video. Originally published: July 1,
2009.
