Film

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: It's Not Pixar, but It'll Do

by ALEX HAGENAH

We are in the midst of a golden age of CG-animated films, right? Pixar cooks up one classic after another, while all the other studios fill in the mediocre bracket (and produce a few gems here and there). Indie companies have also started to get on the train, and the advent of digital 3-D (out with the blue-and-red Saran Wrap and in with the stereoscopic Wayfarers!) has enriched the visuals as much as it has reinvigorated the theater experience. If this is, in fact, the golden age, then the newest entry in the genre, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, definitely doesn't signal a slump.

The third installment in the Ice Age series stars the now-familiar family of Pleistocene creatures as they venture below the ice and discover a preposterously lush, dino-filled world. They have to rescue their sloth friend, Sid (John Leguizamo), who was abducted by an irate mama T. rex after taking her eggs and trying to raise the babies on his own. Upon first descending beneath the ice, they meet the scene-stealing Buck (Simon Pegg). He's a balls-to-the-wall weasel adventurer who guides them through numerous perils as he aims to capture, once and for all, the enigmatic "White Dinosaur" that took his eye years ago.

It's no secret that writers of these children's movies mix in adult references to entertain the parents, but a few in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs are surprisingly edgy (one scene involves a descent into a gaseous chasm, where if you breathe in the smoke, you laugh yourself to death). The "journey to certain death and back" plot is exciting enough to distract from a few awful jokes and missteps. And that nut-crazed squirrel, why, he's the best thing since Wile E. Coyote.