Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs

I'm afraid I just don't find babies funny.

Consequently the first half of this threequel left me feeling somewhat short-changed. (ignoring that I'd borrowed it off of Herschel for nothing)

Rather than another fun adventure with those funny characters from the first two films, almost every scene for that first stretch revolves around looking forward to childbirth / looking after young children. Is this what kids are into these days?

Sid, for his own reasons, is trying to bring up three young dinosaurs, a situation that I couldn't fathom his motivation for. Even the dependable Scrat spends the movie cramped by a love interest. (Scrat does get to actually share the frame with the main cast in this!)

It's hardly the adventure of earlier movies.

But wait, somewhere around the half-way mark Simon Pegg shows up as new character Buck. He acts as a guide on their eventual journey into the unknown, and consequently from here until the closing credits Ice Age is back on form again. Oh, and did I mention that Buck is quite inspiringly mad?

PICKS UP A ROCK LIKE IT'S A CELLPHONE

"Hello? No... No I can't really talk right now. Going to retrieve a dead sloth. No, I know. They're following ME! Yeah, and they think I'M crazy! O-Okay... We're going into the Chasm of Death, I'm going to lose you. Yeah. O-Okay. [quietly] I... I love you too. Goodbye... Goodbye!"

THROWS THE ROCK ASIDE

That's a positive use of the word 'mad' above. Buck is very funny, and constantly helpful. He's not 'mad' in the mean way that Ellie is. Hey, waitaminute, Ellie's hardly mean at all in this. What's happened to her since the last film? Did becoming pregnant somehow transform her personality into nice?

I see that Ice Age 4 is on the way. I guess that's in danger of revolving around Manny and Ellie's kid Peaches.

Hopefully it'll still lead onto another perilous journey though, as to me that's where the strength of this series lies.

Review of Ice Age here.
Review of Ice Age 2: The Meltdown here.