"Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" Movie Review: The second "Ice Age" film was, like most thawed, refrozen and re-thawed entrees, somewhat lacking in freshness.
The recent 3-D remake of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" was fun, but a bit of a disappointment for its studio, financially.
So that makes doing yet another "Ice Age" cartoon -- in 3-D this time, and with a plot lifted from "Journey to the Center of the Earth" -- a really great idea, right?
Only in the strange, negative-numbers world of Hollywood, where two wrongs equal a green light.
The latest installment in the series has our furry quartet -- two mammoths, a saber-toothed tiger and a bumbling sloth -- trudging their way across the prehuman world again. When suddenly the earth opens up beneath their feet and they find a new world.
One full of dinosaurs, rivers of lava and a swashbuckling weasel who promises to get them back home.
This is pretty silly stuff, even for a children's movie, and it sort of sells out the one original point the series used to have: Here was a prehistoric adventure that refused to go the yabba-dabbo-do route.
But dinosaurs sell -- or, at least, so folks thought before "Land of the Lost" disappeared. So cue the terrible lizards. And settle in for a nap.
The original talent is back for this latest installment, and the movie hits most of the same notes the last one did. True to form, Ray Romano's mammoth grumbles, Queen Latifah's calms him down, Denis Leary's tiger snarls toothlessly and John Leguizamo bumbles around as the busiest sloth in pictures.
There are also -- always the best part of these movies -- more of the self-contained adventures of that speechless proto-squirrel, and his endless search for acorns.
But it's all strictly by the numbers now. Some old and predictable pop songs ("Walk the Dinosaur," naturally).
