Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

The third installment of the Ice Age franchise begins with the slap-happy antics of the prehistoric squirrel, Scratte, continuing his search (since the original Ice Age) for his nut. The focus, however, is easily brought back to the main characters, and the story line of Dawn of the Dinosaurs is revealed: What makes a family?

Ellie and Manny (Queen Latifah and Ray Romano respectively) are about to have a baby mammoth. Diego (voiced by Dennis Leary) convinces the sloth Sid (John Leguizamo) that they are going to be left out because Manny has important domestic things to worry about and won’t have time for them. Diego decides to leave the heard and Sid stumbles upon three eggs that he decides to claim as his children so that he can have a family, too.

Long story short, the eggs turn out to be baby tyrannosaurus rexes, and mommy T-Rex is none too happy to find out that her children are being mothered by someone else. Sid is taken away by the mom dino and his pack decides to try and save him. Along the journey, they discover that the ice age world they live in is above another world—the dinosaur kingdom. They meet Buck (Simon Pegg), a hyena-looking creature who is a scrappy adventurer, and helps lead them to where Sid has been taken.

Buck adds most of the adult humor to the film, joking about how a T-Rex was turned into a T-Rachel by a clam shell. He also tells the pack that he knew the scary-looking butterfly back when he was just a caterpillar… “before he came out.”

Aside from the entertainment aspect of the movie, the message is that family is important. Sid and the dino mom make amends and say their goodbyes. Buck is asked to join the heard, but he decides to stay behind to have more adventures. Manny and Ellie have their daughter, and Diego and Sid decide to stick with them because they realize they are a family.

It doesn’t matter what a family looks like or where the members come from—whether they are adopted, a different ethnicity or anything else —but that they stick together. And through all of the laughs, Dawn of the Dinosaurs stresses this idea.

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