- Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- Release Date: Jul 1, 2009
- Critic Score
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88It involves some of the best use of 3-D I've seen in an animated feature. It also introduces a masterstroke that essentially allows the series to take place anywhere: There is this land beneath the surface of the earth, you see...
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75Unlike say, "Monsters Vs. Aliens," which would have been nothing at all without its special-effects spectacle, this is a sweet little comedy, both family-friendly and centered on a nontraditional family, and so suitable for pretty much everyone.
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75There is much more of an emphasis on action in this nicely crafted, fast-paced sequel, which at its best shares the antic qualities of classic Warner Bros. cartoons.
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70With appreciably greater emphasis on action than its predecessors, and clever use of 3-D trickery to enhance storytelling as well as offer spectacle, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs could prove the third time really is the charm.
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67The movie settles into a mode of nice, sweet, safe, and -- sorry, I have to say it -- slightly dull family fun.
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60If "Up" is the animated equivalent of an ice cream sundae, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is the Popsicle: Neither as rich nor as memorable, but more than welcome on a long, hot summer day.
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60Long-in-the-tooth characters detract from the usual high-spirited fun and frolics.
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58The series kept it going for one more entry, but throws its commitment to the era away with movie number three, a ploy sure to anger Ice Age purists everywhere.
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50Pretty much any sign of creative life gets left out in the cold in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the monotonous, strictly by-the-numbers third edition of the wildly lucrative digitally animated franchise.
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50Not bad, not good, Ice Age 3 may be OK enough to do what it was engineered to do, i.e., baby-sit your kid for a while and rake in the dough.
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50There is no faulting the big set pieces, which are shot and edited skillfully. But without involving characters to go along with them, those sequences make for awfully empty movie calories.
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50Though there are chases galore and stampeding dinos aplenty, Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a nicely rendered travelogue without storytelling. There is little to bring an audience along for the ride.
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50Will satisfy its young fan base and is bound to make a ton of money. At this point, though, the series is no longer an artistic pursuit; it's a business deal.
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50Once fresh, the story is now buried under a hoary coating.
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50It's mostly flat, despite being presented in 3-D, and the writing is so unimaginative that at one point a character yells out "yabba dabba doo!"
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50Never representative of more than mediocrity from a technical or story-based standpoint, the Ice Age series has reached a new nadir with its third entry.
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50You should have been able to treat this film as a grab-bag and pull out some plums. Instead it goes grabbing after you.
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50Hasn't got a lot more to say than it did last time about the necessity of accepting the nontraditional family in extraordinary times, but what it does have going for it are its well-delineated characters.
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A sometimes lively, sometimes listless wilderness adventure that will keep the kids cool and mildly entertained for a little while.
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50Couldn't the creative minds at the 20th Century Fox animation studios, hoping to wring a few hundred million dollars more out of their prized family-animation franchise, have come up with something more original?
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50Not even 3D can save this third entry in the Fox animation franchise about a motley crew of prehistoric creatures.
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There's no breathing life into a formula that ought to have bowed out gracefully while the going was good.
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40There's also a sense of ineptness in a script that constantly reaches, with only modest success, for amusing things that the mammoths and their friends can do.
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40Scrat's annoying ubiquity -- is just one piece of evidence that Dawn of the Dinosaurs has been focus-grouped and is now trying to please its presumed young audience a little more than is healthy.
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25Every character is like the hyperactive rat-squirrel Scrat, and the audience is bounced around like his elusive acorn.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 30 out of 46
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Mixed: 10 out of 46
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Negative: 6 out of 46
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EvanS5
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CriticVidal1This movie sucks as my ass does. I would have scored it a 3, but the characters just...ticked me off.