My six-year old co-critic and I are agreeing to disagree on this one. He gives it an enthusiastic thumbs up. Me, not so much. Don’t get me wrong; I am a big fan of animation. I’ll even go to see an animated movie without a kid in tow. But this is not one I’d recommend to adults who aren’t accompanying little ones. The jokes meant for the adults in the audience just aren’t that clever and I wasn’t really amused by much except for Scrat. He’s the crazed squirrel who’s been chasing the elusive acorn through all of the Ice Age movies and in this one, it seems like his dogged pursuit is finally halted in the name of love when a wily, female squirrel, Scratte, arrives on scene.
Asked for his favorite part of the movie, the six-year old Siskel to my Ebert said “the baby dinosaurs, and the mother dinosaur, and the guy with the eye patch and the sword” (referring to the weasel Buck), all of which are new characters. So maybe he’s getting bored with Manny, Diego, Sid and the rest of the franchise crew or maybe, like most boys his age, he just really likes dinosaurs – and anything with an eye patch and a sword. I will say, we saw this movie in traditional 2-D and it would probably have been better (for me) in 3D. I could see how some of the scenes would have been great in 3D. Unfortunately, the dinosaur lover doesn’t like the 3D glasses – when we saw Up they sat perched on top of his head throughout the entire movie.
So if you have kids who are begging you to take them, do it because you love them. If they’re under ten, they’ll probably love it and you’ll survive, just go for the 3D version if you can. But if you can convince them to wait until it comes out on DVD so you can push play and leave the room, you’ll be much better off.