Mild and woolly

LITTLE ROCK — Ice Age:

Dawn of the Dinosaurs80Cast: (voices of) Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, Simon Pegg Directors: Carlos Saldanha, Mike Thurmeier Rated: PG Running time: 104 minutes

All right, it's summer. And it's a kids movie. It's all about cute and cuddly, Happy Meal-ready characters who can be transposed easily in video games and other ancillary merchandise. And as auteurs like Michael Bay and McG have shown us, narrative coherency and emotional resonance are overrated.

Things happen in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, but they don't really make sense. And it's not really very funny either. If something very much like wit is occasionally half-heartedly attempted, it's almost immediately abandoned in favor of stale sitcom observations and platitudes.

And while Scrat - the sabertoothed squirrel-rat who has a Wile E. Coyote-like obsession with oversize acorns - still has the power to amuse (this film awards him a femme fatale love interest, the imaginatively named Scratte),most of us who don't fall within the film's single-digit age demographic will be bored with the movie's mildly scatological humor, derivative adventure plot and tacked-on life lessons. But then, the movie isn't really for us, now is it?

As to how the kids will receive it, I guess they'll be thrilled with the 3-D effects. (Though if you can manage it, you might want to forgo the premium Real D screenings and opt for a bargain matinee with the flat version - it'll save you a couple of bucks per ticket and, unlike, say Coraline, stereoscopic imaging lends little to this film.) Children are also likely to take to the swashbuckling, dino-hunting Buck (Simon Pegg), a one-eyed weasel who is equal parts CaptainsAhab and Jack Sparrow.

The setup here is that woolly mammoths Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) are expecting a baby, which has caused the neurotic Manny to distance himself from the other members of his tribe, the Smilodon Diego (Denis Leary) and the sloth Sid (John Leguizamo). Diego, his predatory instincts tempered by domesticity, figures it's probably time to move on, while the ever-idiotic Sid responds by filching some dinosaur eggs, which quickly hatch.

When their mother shows up to reclaim them, she hauls off the cradle-robbing Sid as well. Whichsends the gang through a crack in the ice into the land of the lost to rescue their buddy and encounter volcanos, laughing gas and the occasional non sequitur that suggests the filmmakers suspected that someone over the age of 9 might be watching.

While the Ice Age franchise suffers in comparison to more ambitious computer-animated features such as Pixar's Up and Wall-E, it's honestly not a bad way to get the kids out of the summer heat for an hour and a half or so. And this third installment is arguably the best of the series; it's certainly an improvement over 2006's Ice Age: The Meltdown.

But, if you need more than bright colors and lots of frantic movement to stay amused - if the sun hasn't sufficiently softened your brain to the point that all it will stand is beautiful visual noise and sound effects - then you'll likely be underwhelmed by this kinetic film, which feels like the product of screenwriting software that has yet to become self-aware and develop a sense of shame.

MovieStyle, Pages 36, 41 on 07/03/2009