Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Manny, Diego, Sid and the rest of the Ice Age gang is back in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs starring Ray Romano, Denis Leary and John Leguizamo as the lead characters and a returning Queen Latifah as Ellie.

The story begins soon after the events of "Ice Age: The Meltdown" for Manny (Romano) and the Ice Age gang.

Scrat continues the elusive hunt for his beloved acorn, a hunt that goes awry after Scrat falls for female sabre-toothed squirrel named Scratte. Manny and Ellie are now together and are expecting a baby, which leaves Manny nervously taking every precaution to make sure everything is perfect for when the baby arrives.

Diego (Leary) after failing to catch a gazelle realizes that he is fed up of being treated like a house cat and that he is becoming too laid back, so he decides to leave the herd.

Sid (Leguizamo), seeing as how Manny and Ellie are working on their new family, dreams about having a family of his own, in doing so, Sid steals three dinosaur eggs. As Sid begins to raise the dinosaurs as their mother, the babie's real mother finds Sid and takes both him and the babies to a strange underground world where many species of dinosaurs live.

Manny, a returning Diego and the rest of the herd attempt to rescue Sid, while the gang dodges dinosaurs and danger at every turn, they meet a one-eyed weasel named Buck (Simon Pegg) who hunts dinosaurs intently finding the one dinosaur who took his eye, that Buck names Rudy.

Sure this story, seems a bit silly, but I found this movie quite funny as opposed to the second film. It's rare to see an animated film, with such a talented and comedic cast, but Leary, Leguizamo and Romano are great together on screen.

The one thing to me, that stood out from the previous films, was the casting of Pegg as Buck, an adventurous almost Rambo like weasel, brought the key hysterical moments in the film. Pegg was a great choice to cast, as he coming off his solid portayal of Scotty in "Star Trek."

In my review about Madagascar, I stated that the penguins were one of the funniest animated characters I've seen on screen, but I'm surprised that Scrat who seems to gain more noteriety than the actual lead characters doesn't have his own film. Sure Scrat, doesn't speak, but his comedic antics and follies while searching for his beloved acorn is a movie in itself.

I would rate this movie equal to last year's Madagascar sequel, although out of all three Ice Age movies, and like most sequels nowadays, nothing is better than the first.

Now you've read my review check out what some fellow critics thought of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.