Manny the mammoth (Romano) and his mismatched herd return for their third big-screen adventure. All of the characters are back, along with the addition of a few dinosaurs, a female Scrat (dubbed Scratte), and a slightly mad, survival and adventure obsessed weasel named Buck (Pegg).

As the story unfolds, Sid (Leguizamo), the silly, stinky and senseless, but lovable, sloth feels left out as Manny and Ellie (Latifah), his mammoth wife (no, that’s not a joke, she’s a mammoth too), prepare to bring their little bundle of joy into the world. When Sid comes across three seemingly abandoned eggs, he decides to be their “mother.” Little does he know that the eggs, found underground, more like under-ice, are dinosaur eggs left by a momma T-Rex, who is none too happy to find her babies missing. Apparently, there’s a pocket of tropical jungle under the ground where dinosaurs still thrive. It’s assumed it’s close to the center of the Earth, and heated, as well as lit, by huge lava flows. "Yeah, right", you say…c’mon it’s a kid’s movie! Show some of that classic “willing suspension of disbelief,” and just go with it. This adventure is one that your kids and even you, as an adult, are going to enjoy.

After Sid gets carried off inadvertently by the momma T-Rex, the “herd,” including pregnant Ellie, saddles off to rescue him. Diego, voiced by the ever great Dennis Leary, feeling he’s losing his edge (he runs out of breath while chasing “prey”), and deciding it’s time to move on, rejoins the herd just in time to help save the day.

It’s after our heroes enter the underground tropical jungle that the film really begins to pick up. Soon after arriving in this strange world from the past, the gang encounters Buck. Buck, voiced with great comedic energy by Simon Pegg, fresh off his turn as Scotty in Star Trek, really steals the show from the characters of the herd with his Ahab-like quest to capture the great white dinosaur he has dubbed Ruby. Here’s where the film gets interesting to all us old literature majors and buffs, as Buck’s quest to capture Ruby is an obvious borrowing of Ahab’s quest for Moby Dick. Buck lost an eye to Ruby, like Ahab lost a leg to Moby Dick. Buck carries around a knife made from one of Ruby’s teeth, like Ahab sports a whale bone leg. Buck is slightly mad, and Ahab is slightly mad. Herein is the difference, though, between the two. While Ice Age 3 borrows from Moby Dick, a dark, heady, and grim work, with its own brand of humor, there is none of this darkness in Ice Age 3. While it’s great to see that the great tales of American Literature like Moby Dick live on and are inspirational to everything from comic books adaptations to kid’s movies, Ice Age 3 takes the idea of the Ahabian quest, and makes it kid friendly, as well as hilarious, with a much happier ending.

Buck’s quest is hilarious, and the toll his time in this Hades of a jungle, away from other mammals, has taken on his sanity is nothing short of zany inanity of the best kind (Buck is separated from the “great chain of being” much like Ahab was, and he quotes Dante’s Inferno to Manny, warning him to “abandon all hope ye who enter here.” The literary allusions just keep coming with this film!). Buck steals the show with his antics, heroics, monologues to himself, and the language barrier between him and the rest of the gang (his Australio-Brit slang causes confusion amongst the herd).

While Buck steals the show, Scrat’s existential quest for the ever elusive acorn has become a show all unto itself by this point in the films’ series. Never in the history of a kid’s movie series has a side character, and his own quest antics, taken on such a life of their own that he needs be the only familiar character to appear in the film’s two minute trailer for the film being advertised to be instantly recognized. This time he meets a female of his own species who seems to be on a quest similar to his own. Their escapades throughout the film take on a life of their own, and communicate more satire, humor, and comedic truth to the audience than any of the other characters in the film, for all their dialogue. Scrat and Scratte’s simple whimpers, winks, gurgles, giggles, scatting and scrambling communicate more about life, love, caring, sharing, selfishness, selflessness, domestication and the cry of freedom than any of the films other plots or speeches. To go into a description of their actions and antics here would be a travesty to them, as they have to be observed to be fully appreciated. For adults not looking forward to sitting through a crowded theatre surrounded by noisy kids (like I wasn’t), Scrat and Scratte's adventures make the film worth the braving of the multiplex with the kids.

Overall, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a film that is truly enjoyable and fun for the whole family, including the adults, and worth a viewing. It is funny, and is packed full of lessons on life, love, and family, with a little satire thrown in, that all can enjoy without having to resort to the hidden, and coded adult humor that we see so often in kid’s movies like the Shrek series. Take the kids, go see it, and have a good time. I know you will.