Oct 28, 2009 10:34 PM
2307 Views
Introduction
The ICE Age series is one of my favorite in animated movies. So ICE Age 3D was an obvious choice for our family vacation movie. Unfortunately, the 3D version was not available here in Chennai, so we had to opt for the 2D version.
Plot
Manny & Ellie are excited as Ellie is expecting their baby. Sid is equally excited about it, but is soon put off by Diego and goes hunting to parent his own child. Unfortunately, with no mate in sight, Sid seems to have no chance of that. But, luckily Sid stumbles on 3 eggs which he nurtures carefully. But, surprise, surprise, out of them hatches three T Rex babies.
Momma Rex comes around and takes back the babies and along with them Sid as well. That sets the stage for Manny, Ellie, Diego, Crash and Eddie to find and bring Sid back. The adventure takes them into the Jurassic World of Dinosaurs. Buck, a one-eyed weasel, joins them as their guide in the adventure in the dangerous world of pre-historic plants and animals to bring back Sid.
Critic’s Viewpoint
One of the major worrying points with Sequels to hit animation movies is the fact that most of the sequels have a low budget re-use of canned scenes from the hit movie kind of a look and feel about them. They also generally suffer from a lack of strong new story in which to embed the favorite characters from the original. ICE Age series seems buck the trend in this aspect as all the three movies of the series have had a different story theme and the scenes and animation each time have got better and are distinctly different.
Some of the reasons why I love the ICE Age series are excellent animation, good story, lots of actions and lots of humorous one-liners. ICE Age 3 scored on all these fronts again. The animation was really excellent, probably the best of the series. The action especially in the Jurassic Age is excellent and fast paced, though there are less cute animals around in this one compared to ICE Age 2. Finally, the one-liners that Ray Romano and the others churned out during the movie were excellent.
Coming to the characters, I found Manny to be strangely subdued in the first part, maybe a bit nervous at becoming parent. Also, Diego seemed out of character and too much jolly through the movie, but the rest were as per the cue of the first two movies. The standout character was the new entrant, Buck the one-eyed Weasel. Simon Pegg brings out the complete craziness that Buck represents and stands out for punching lines at the right moment, such as the “Buck stops here.”
But, one of my favorite of the first two movies, Scrat disappoints in this movie. The love scenes involving him and Scratte are too long and stretched like a rubber band and tended to slow down the movie. I did like the dancing scene they had while chasing the acorn, but apart from that the other scenes were a bit of a drag. I think Scrat is way past his sell by date in this series and should be put to rest now.
Summary
As of writing this summary, ICE Age 3 is already the second highest grossing animated film of all time.
Overall, for the 2D version of ICE Age 3, I would give this movie a 4 star rating, one star deducted for the overdone Scrat scenes.
