Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs 2009

     This film follows Ice Age: The Meltdown.  Manny and many of his friends find there are changes in their lives.  Scrat is still trying to hold onto his beloved acorn.  Manny and Ellie are expecting a baby and Manny wants everything to be perfect for the birth.  Diego is fed up with being treated like a house-cat?  He ponders the idea that he may be too laid back?  Sid wants a family because he sees how happy Manny and Ellie are to be having a baby.

     This film is funny and there are also slightly scary parts with the T-Rex character.  I would have liked identification of the species of some of the dinosaurs but I don’t know how this would have been done? Maybe school children are more familiar with these facts than adults?  Sid makes a BIG mistake when he adopts three eggs that have not hatched!!  He doesn’t take into consideration how large these eggs really are!!  3 ½* (I liked this movie)

94 min, Animation directed by Carlos Saldanha, Mike Thurmeier with the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Eunice Cho, Karen Disher, Harrison Fahn, Maile Flanagan, Jason Fricchione, Bill Hader, Kelly Keaton, Joey King, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, Alegra, John and Lucas Leguizamo, Clea Lewis, Jane Lynch.

Note:  Imdb 7 out of 10, Roger Ebert 3 ½*, Rotten Tomatoes 46% critic 62% audience, EmpireOnline.com 3* out of 5* James Dyer, The Guardian 3* out of 5* Peter Bradshaw, PluggedIn.com 4.5* out of 5* Bob Hoose, Amazon 4.5* out of 5* with 1062 reviews, CommonSenseMedia.org age 6+ 3* out of 5* Sandie Angulo Chen 2* educational, 3* positive, 3* role models, 3* violence/scariness, 1* sex, 1* language.  

Special Note:  The character Buck was based on Crocodile Dundee with the late Steve Irwin.   Also on Frank Buck, adventurer and actor in the 1930’s and 1940’s.  With a worldwide gross of over $880 million, this is Blue Sky Studio’s and the Ice Age franchises highest grossing film to date.  It was also the highest grossing animated film of 2009 worldwide.  Domestically it fell short of Up 2009 and Monsters Vs. Aliens 2009.  This film and Ice Age 2002 are the only two films in this franchise to be nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film.  They lost to Spirited Away 2002 and Monsters Vs. Aliens 2009.

Other Dinosaur Films:  The Meltdown, Collision Course, Ice Age, A Mammoth Christmas Special, Walking with Dinosaurs, Dinosaur, The Great Egg-escapade, Rio 1 and 2, The Good Dinosaur, Dino Time, We’re Back, The Croods.