This is starting to get silly. There shouldn’t be dinosaurs in a story that takes place during the last ice age. It’s a well known fact that they were long since extinct at that point. Yes, I’m well aware that this is a fantasy, and yes, I’m aware that it’s supposed to be light and fun and unburdened with historical accuracy. But come on, even fantasies have their limits. "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," the third chapter in the series, is goofy and innocuous, completely removed from the more clever ideas that made the first two films enjoyable. Despite the fact that the release is in “eye-popping” 3-D, it’s been reduced to the level of your average Saturday morning cartoon, lacking any real depth and full of thrill-ride misadventures that don’t really go anywhere. I grant you that it’s a decent enough film for younger children, but I fear that the adults in the audience won’t get much out of it.

The film, which reunites all the main characters from the previous films, is founded on the premise that a handful of dinosaurs survived extinction and made their home beneath the snow-covered earth. How this happened is something the film never bothers to explain, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that Sid the Sloth (voiced by John Leguizamo), Manny the Wooly Mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), his pregnant wife, Ellie (voiced by Queen Latifah), her possum brothers Crash and Eddie (Seann William Scott and Josh Peck), and Diego the Saber-Tooth Tiger (voiced by Denis Leary) have stumbled onto this hidden world and go on yet another adventure. New to the series is Buck (voiced by Simon Pegg), a weasel left stranded in the dinosaur cave. He has one eye and an Australian accent. If you ever wondered what Steve Irwin would have been like with a mental disorder, now’s your chance to find out.

The plot: Sid, longing for a family of his own, stumbles upon three eggs after falling through a patch of thin ice. He happily claims them as his own--he even draws crude smiley faces on the shells to give them some personality. Only when they hatch does he discover that his “children” are actually T-Rexes. It isn’t long before their real mother ascends and rounds up her children, taking Sid along with her. It’s now up to his friends to enter the dinosaur cave and rescue him. Lo and behold, they’re aided by Buck, a thoroughly insane adventurer with a leaf for an eye patch and a dinosaur tooth for a hunting knife. He’s on a quest for his own version of Moby Dick: A great white dinosaur he has named Rudy.

The main story is occasionally interrupted by comedic vignettes with Scrat the Squirrel, who, of course, is still on a mission to find an acorn. His frenetic escapades have been enhanced for this new movie with the addition of Scratte, a female flying squirrel who’s also in search of an acorn. They’re simultaneously in love and in competition with each other, which is kind of funny but also kind of lame. Scrat’s acorn episodes may have been fun at first, but now they’re just getting old. Think back to the era of the Warner Bros. cartoons: How many Wile E. Coyote shorts does it take to make it clear that (a) he’ll always get hurt by defective Acme products and (b) he’ll never catch the Road Runner? Not too many, I should think. At a certain point, you’re just beating a dead horse.

The humor is periodically tamed, albeit weakly, by more serious plot points. Diego, for example, fears he’s losing his edge, which is why he wants to leave as soon as Manny’s baby is born. Sid is still being hassled for his more annoying tendencies, none of which are helped by the fact that he likes kids so much. Manny is overprotective of Ellie and the baby, so much so that he begins neglecting his friends. All of this is addressed, but they’re hardly developed. This is probably why I didn’t feel much of anything for the characters, certainly not like I did in the first two films. It now seems as if the filmmakers were more interested in perfecting the look, and indeed, the computer imagery and bold color scheme provide great visual appeal (the 3-D doesn’t do much for them, but then again, 3-D itself hasn’t been all that impressive lately).

I’m sure some of you think I’m being too hard on this film, but I’m sorry, I can only suspend disbelief so high before the ropes threaten to buckle. I’ll say this much: If you absolutely must see this film, or if your child is pressing the issue, I recommend you save the extra money and see it in traditional 2-D. Otherwise, you should be in no hurry to get to the theater. "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" is proof that there can be too much of a good thing; Manny, Sid, Ellie, Diego, and the rest are fun characters, but after two entertaining adventures, they’ve officially overstayed their welcome. It doesn’t help that they’re trapped in a story undeserving of them; when it comes to this kind of cartoon, there’s no way to genuinely be interested in the idea that dinosaurs live underground. Believe me, I tried.

- Chris Pandolfi

More Recent Reviews:

American, The (2010)

Wall Street (1987)

Last Exorcism, The (2010)

Hubble 3D in IMAX (2010)

Lottery Ticket (2010)