BEFORE: I want to link to my superhero movies, but it's going to take a couple days. I'll continue with the dinosaur theme.
THE PLOT: When Sid the Sloth's attempt to adopt three dinosaur eggs gets him abducted by their real mother to an underground lost world, his friends attempt to rescue him.
AFTER: I found out last week, I've got ex-co-worker friends who work at Blue Sky, so I'll try to be kind here, but it's going to be tough. I fell asleep about 1/3 of the way through this, and again 2/3 of the way through - my wife found me this morning sacked out in the basement.
I enjoyed the first "Ice Age" film, then I tolerated the second one because the Meltdown in the title could be taken as a metaphor for global warming. But there's not much of a story here, or anything really that held my attention. So the sloth gets kidnapped by a dinosaur - which is very dangerous, since I was rooting for the T.Rex to eat him, and put him out of my misery...
So once again we're in the position of watching prehistoric animals go on a journey, lumbering across the plains at an uninteresting pace - with many unfortunate slapsticky moments along the way - until they discover the "lost world". (It's populated by hundreds of dinosaurs, so how "lost" can it be?) Do I need to point out here that all of Western science agrees that the dinosaurs died out millions of years before the development of mammals was even possible? Yeah, yeah, lost world, yada yada yada...
The cultural references don't always land either - it's weird to see characters reference "The Christmas Song" sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks, when the entire movie is set millions of years before Christmas was a concept, or Jesus for that matter...
The one bright spot, however, was the new character of Buck, voiced by Simon Pegg (star of "Hot Fuzz" and "Run Fatboy Run") - he's a one-eyed adventuring weasel who's wild, insane, and who gets all the best lines of dialogue. He also performs the best stunts, like riding on a pterodactyl. If there's any explanation as to why this is the 2nd highest grossing animated film ever, it's got to be because of Buck.
But the running gag with the acorn - come on, enough already. It's been three whole films, and I don't understand why Scrat doesn't just eat the acorn already, during one of the many times where it ends up in his possession, before he loses it again.
I'm scratching my head wondering how "Land of the Lost" can be regarded as a commercial flop, while this film is considered to be a box-office success. By all rights, it should be the other way around...
Also starring the voices of Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott, with cameos by Bill Hader, Jane Lynch, Kristen Wiig, and my friend Karen as Scratte.
RATING: 4 out of 10 rockslides (again, I'm being kind...)
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