In a sentenceThe mammoths have run out of things to say; luckily a squirrel and a one-eyed weasel have not
Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) are expecting a calf, and Manny has built a playground out of ice and taken to fretting. Diego (Denis Leary) loses a race with a gazelle and decides a sabre-tooth has no place in a nursery. Sid (John Leguizamo), left out, finds three eggs in a cavern under the ice and takes them home as his own. They hatch into dinosaurs. Their mother comes for them, and for Sid, and the herd follows her down a tunnel into a jungle beneath the glacier where the dinosaurs never died out. They meet Buck (Simon Pegg), a one-eyed weasel with a knife made from a tooth. Above the ice, Scrat (Chris Wedge) meets Scratte (Karen Disher), and the acorn is no longer his alone.
The third Ice Age moves its herd underground, where the colours are better and the jokes are not. Simon Pegg’s Buck and the Scrat interludes are worth the ticket for the under-tens; everyone else will find the mammoths have little left to give.
The first Ice Age, from 2002, was a small film about three animals and a baby walking across a frozen landscape, and most of what was good in it came from the walking. Carlos Saldanha’s third entry takes the same animals, now a herd, and drops them through the ice into a hot green valley where the dinosaurs are still alive. It is a sensible way to get a new set of backgrounds. It is a less sensible way to find a story, and over 94 minutes the film keeps reaching for one and coming back with a chase.
What story there is comes from four screenwriters (Yoni Brenner, Mike Reiss, Peter Ackerman and Michael Berg, from a story by Jason Carter Eaton), and it is organised around who feels left out. Manny (Ray Romano) is about to be a father and is unbearable about it. Diego (Denis Leary) is slowing down and wants to leave before anyone notices. Sid (John Leguizamo) steals three eggs because nobody will let him hold anything else. Each of these would do for a short, and the film treats them as shorts, picking them up and putting them down between set pieces.
The valley itself is the best decision anyone made. Marcin Jakubowski’s production design swaps the white and grey of the earlier films for ferns the size of houses, pink and orange fungus, pools of lava and a sky you cannot see for leaves. The animators do good work on scale. When the mother dinosaur first stands up behind Sid the frame has to tilt to fit her in, and her hide has the look of old luggage. In 3D, which the film was built for, the long drops and the carnivorous plant land as intended; at home they are drops and a plant.
Simon Pegg’s Buck is the other reason to be there. He is a weasel with an eyepatch, a tooth for a sword and a feud with something large and white that lives in the valley, and Pegg plays him as a British explorer who has been alone far too long and knows it. John Powell gives him a brassy, swaggering theme, and Harry Hitner cuts his entrance fast enough that the children in our screening sat up. For about twenty minutes the film has a centre.
And then there is Scrat. The squirrel’s pursuit of his acorn has always been the series’ silent-comedy strand, and here he gets a rival, Scratte (Karen Disher), who is faster, cleverer and able to glide. We laughed out loud, more than once, at a sequence in which the two of them fight over the acorn above a lava flow, Hitner cutting on every slip and recovery and Powell scoring it like a tango. We also noticed we were waiting for Scrat to come back, which is not the state a film wants its audience in.
The herd is the problem. Romano, Leary and Leguizamo were well cast three films ago and have nothing new to play; their lines about parenthood and getting older are the kind you can finish before the character does. Queen Latifah’s Ellie is given a pregnancy and not much else. Crash and Eddie (Seann William Scott and Josh Peck) bicker on cue. There is a fart joke, then another one, and a stretch in the middle, as the group walks through a field of gas and talks in high voices, where we were bored and a little resentful about it, because the valley around them deserved better jokes. Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are in and out before you can place the voices.
Most critics split down the middle on this one and so do we. It is a U certificate, it is 94 minutes, and it is kind to its audience; a six-year-old will be happy and not frightened, apart from one scene near the end that we will not describe. The adult on the sofa will get a weasel, a squirrel and some handsome ferns. That is not nothing, but it is about a third of a film.
The reviews split almost evenly, and few critics are enthusiastic either way. Where they agree is on the animation, which most describe as technically assured, with the texture and depth of the dinosaur world drawing particular praise. Simon Pegg’s Buck is the most often cited virtue, credited with bringing some swashbuckling energy, and several critics pick out the Scrat sequences as the film’s most reliable laughs and its best use of 3D.
The reservations cluster around story and comedy. Most find the plot thin and the central relationships tired, and more than one complains that the jokes lean on fart gags and pop-cultural references. The spread is wide: Den of Geek calls it solid, harmless entertainment, while The Hollywood Reporter finds it monotonous and dated beside its competition. The gentler verdicts come from critics judging it as a film for very young children; the harsher ones from those who expect it to hold anyone older.
The critic is mildly positive, despite finding little story. They praise the imaginative animation and splendid pratfalls.
Read the full review →Dyer finds the film pacey and enjoyable, though he says the franchise’s character relationships have grown tired. He singles out Simon Pegg’s Buck as a welcome source of swashbuckling energy.
Read the full review →Bradshaw finds the film a pleasant, likable and safe choice for very young children, though some humor falls flat. He singles out one particularly good gag about Sid’s romantic prospects.
Read the full review →The page identifies this as a review, but the critic’s verdict is not visible. The accessible text does not reveal what the critic praised or criticized.
Read the full review →Collins finds the film entertaining but says its story is thin. He praises Blue Sky Studios’ more subtle animation, especially its texture, scale and depth.
Read the full review →Stewart finds the third entry lively in spots but ultimately unconvincing. He praises Simon Pegg’s swashbuckling Buck and the film’s visual spectacle, while criticizing the recurring comedy and the less animated central characters.
Read the full review →Part of · 3 of 5
Ice AgeThe original: three animals, one baby, a long cold walk, and it still holds.
The Land Before TimeDinosaur orphans on a journey, drawn by hand and sadder than anything here.
Journey to the Center of the Earth · not reviewed yetThe lost world under the ground done with ducks, lizards and real sets.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-RabbitA U certificate where every gag is built by hand and none are wasted.
My Neighbour TotoroFor the small child who liked the forest more than the chases.
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