Movie Review: Ice Age 3

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Synopsis: When Sid'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.

If you're familiar with this series, you'll probably be happy to hear the same great voice talents like Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Queen Latifah are all back as some of the great characters from the first 2 movies. Scrat and the possums are back for the comic relief when Sid isn't on the screen to keep some laughs coming. There are a few new characters added to the mix too, like Scrat's new love interest, some dinosaurs (including 3 fun, cute babies) and the wacky Buck (voiced by Simon Pegg... think Richard Shaw as Quint from Jaws after about 20 Red Bulls). There is peril, action and cuteness like this series is known for and it's a good heartwarming film for the whole family.

To compare it to the first 2? I'm not sure, but I think the more established characters sort of took a back seat to the new blood, which is OK to keep the series from getting too stale, and the biggest difference was that even though I didn't get to see the 3-D version in theaters, the animation in this one was awesome, and I love great animation. The others were good, but this is a step up. It just looked fantastic, especially the dinos. Hard to believe I was blown away by Jurassic Park years ago and now the freakin' cartoons are up to and past that level in many ways. The action sequences in this one are great as well, thanks to mainly to the look of it.

So it's another really good, amusing, entertaining family film in this series for my money. Some of the jokes fall flat, some made me groan and several made me laugh. It's got great characters and sort of a warm-and-fuzzy family togetherness thing going on. Well worth a watch.

8/10