More like "YAWN of the Dinosaurs"

ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS
Rated PG for some mild rude humor and peril.
94 minutes
Fox
** out of 5

When you go into a franchise having only seen one of the two previous features and the last time you saw the original was upon its initial release 7 years ago you can bet that there’s going to be some confusion on who characters are. Luckily, with an animated feature film it makes things a little easier as you only really have to remember which celebrity voice is who and it all comes flooding back.

I avoided seeing “Ice Age: The Meltdown” when it was released in 2006 because it just seemed way more of the same with more fart and poop jokes thrown in. I knew this was probably what I was bound for as the case of diminishing returns generally runs rampant when the original product wasn’t that great to begin with. And it certainly doesn’t raise one’s expectations when there are already fart and poop jokes in the trailer.

So what does one get upon entry? Well one thing for sure is a movie presented in the newly fadded 3-D format. This adds absolutely nothing to the presentation. Part of the problem with showing Computer-animated films in this format is that the image, for the most part, is already greatly three dimensional to begin with. If a movie is simply being presented in 3-D to up prices of tickets sales as this one is, it automatically pales in comparison to something as eye-popping as “Up,” “Monsters vs. Aliens” and “Coraline.” Even the horror remake “My Bloody Valentine 3-D” put this effect to better comical use than the creators of “Ice Age 3.”

This time out we find Manny (voiced again by usually funny-man Ray Romano) and his partner Ellie (Queen Latifah) gestating their first offspring together. They aren’t the only ones facing changes in their current status however. Scrat has found the love of his fight, er, life in Scratte. It’s love at first nut for this pair which is also the abundance of their relationship. Continually fighting for what is apparently the last acorn on earth while some variation of “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine” by Lou Rawls plays in the background.

Also we find Diego (Dennis Leary) possibly leaving the herd as he nearly has a heart attack trying to chase down some dinner along with Sid (John Leguizamo) coming to terms with his true feminine side as he discovers some frozen eggs, unbeknownst to him to belong to a T-Rex mommy who is anything but pleased to find them gone missing.

As we plunder the “depths” of children’s comedy (everything from penis to gay jokes, harty har har) we discover the so-called plot of this plodding excuse for time filler till next year’s “Toy Story 3” or even the re-release of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2” both newly presented in 3-D to tide us over until Pixar’s June 2010 release of awesomeness. The “plot” of this is that Sid has been captured by the mother T-Rex and has taken him to a sort of Lost World (right underneath their feet above!). How an entire world of dinosaurs remains hidden beneath the so-called ice age going on at surface level is a true blunder of story telling. Anyway, Sid has been taken away and now everyone must band together to find him and bring him back to the frozen tundra’s above where he “belongs” even though it surely seems like everyone he’s “friends” with wouldn’t mind for a second if he truly went missing but I digress.

The only new character I believe we get here is a cringe worthy character named Buck. This should have been the best character in the movie as being voiced by Simon Pegg of “Spaced,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz” and “Star Trek” fame. However, you don’t even realize it’s him until the character is halfway through with his need for the story and by the time you do figure out who the voice belongs to he has nothing funny left to say. Not that he did before or you may have noticed his voice way earlier.

If you’re looking for Pixar quality here, you won’t even come close to Dreamworks. After all, when the only films Fox has been able to churn out are three “Ice Age” films and “Robots” from 2005 which that one movie was better and more original than all three of these “Ice Ages.” If the cinematic gawds were to truly do us a favor, it would cast Blue Sky Studios back to whence they came, the ice age of filmdom.