Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, also known as Ice Age 3, is a 2009 3-D computer animated film. It is the third installment of the Ice Age series. A sneak preview was shown in selected theaters on Father's Day in the United States. The film was produced by Blue Sky Studios and features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Simon Pegg, and Chris Wedge, and the film is distributed by 20th Century Fox.
The film was released in RealD where available. The release gained some controversy when Fox announced that it would no longer pay to supply 3D glasses to theaters, which led a threat from a number of exhibitors to only show the film in standard 2D projection. The film's original trailer debuted with the film Horton Hears a Who! on March 14, 2008. There are three others that have been released, with the third and fourth (which shows Buck) being the most closely resembling each other. Queen Latifah recorded a cover of the song "Walk the Dinosaur".
Ellie (Queen Latifah) and Manny (Ray Romano) are expecting their first child, and Manny is obsessed with making life perfect and safe for the family, since his first experiences as a husband and father went bad when his family were killed by hunters. At the same time, Diego (Denis Leary) finds himself unable to catch a gazelle he has been stalking and decides to leave the herd, believing that he is losing his predatory nature as a tiger. Sid (John Leguizamo) grows jealous of Manny and Ellie and “adopts” three apparently abandoned eggs that he finds in an icy underground cavern. Manny tells him to put them back, but Sid instead looks after the eggs, which hatch into baby Tyrannosaurus ' the next morning.
Although Sid tries his best to raise the three dinosaurs, their rambunctious behavior scares away all the other animals’ young and ruins a playground Manny built for Ellie’s baby. A female Tyrannosaurus, Momma, whose eggs Sid stole, soon returns and carries both Sid and her youth underground, with Diego in pursuit. Manny, Ellie, Crash, and Eddie (Seann William Scott, Josh Peck) follow as well and discover that the icy cavern leads to a vast jungle populated by dinosaurs thought to be extinct. Here, an Ankylosaurus threatens the herd despite Diego’s efforts to fend it off; they are saved from a further crowd of angry reptiles by a one-eyed, insane weasel named Buckminster, or Buck (Simon Pegg).
Before they can exit the jungle, Rudy attacks at full force; Buck helps the others ensnare him briefly, but he escapes and resumes his onslaught. The herd is saved by the timely arrival of Momma, who charges at Rudy and knocks him off a cliff. As she and her children wish Sid well, Buck – now without a purpose in life since Rudy is gone – decides to join the herd and live on the surface. However, a distant roar tells him that Rudy is still alive; he changes his mind and sends the herd home, blocking off the path to the underground jungle at the same time so that no one else can go down there. Manny and Ellie welcome Peaches into their frozen world and admit that Sid did a good job looking after Momma's children (though Manny tells Diego that he will never let Sid babysit Peaches). Diego decides to remain with the herd, while Buck stays where he wants to be: underground, battling it out with Rudy.
Scrat and Scratte
As in the previous Ice Age films, Scrat (Chris Wedge) does everything he can to retrieve his precious acorn. His efforts are complicated by the presence of Scratte (Karen Disher), a female of his species, with whom he is instantly smitten. Scratte outsmarts him a number of times, once by demonstrating her ability to glide like a flying squirrel, but the two eventually fall in love after Scrat saves her from falling to her death in the lava river. He even chooses to focus his attention on her instead of the acorn until the end of the film, when he tires of her finicky nature and reverts to his old ways. The ensuing fight between the couple leads to a volcanic explosion that hurls Scrat and the acorn back to the surface, leaving Scratte trapped underground. However, as Scrat is about to enjoy his acorn, a stray piece of ice falls on him and knocks the acorn back into Scratte’s hands. He screams in frustration, having lost both his love and his acorn.
