Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Carlos Saldanha’s 2009 animation is the third in the series, with Mike Thurmeier sharing the direction. Sid adopts a clutch of eggs, their mother carries him into a world beneath the ice, and the herd climbs down after him. The studio framed this premise as a door rather than a puzzle. Their stated aim was a what if adventure, the kind of discovery that finding King Kong or Shangri-La would be, which is why the film never asks how a tropical jungle sits under an ice age and gives a viewer hunting for consistency nothing to hold. The more concrete change is that the comedy changes hands. Buck, the one eyed dinosaur hunting weasel voiced by Simon Pegg, appears underground and takes the comic centre away from Sid; roughly the last two thirds of the 94 minutes leans on him. Anyone following the series for the balance inside the herd will find the best lines handed to a newcomer. It took 886.7 million dollars worldwide, of which 690.1 million came from outside North America, so more than three quarters of the money arrived from abroad, and the franchise peaked here. Worth it if a newcomer taking over the jokes is acceptable. Avoid it if you want the dinosaurs under the ice to be explained rather than simply opened.