So Sue Me

No, I'm not referring to Sarah Palin's threatened lawsuits against a blogger (or more?), I'm talking about having taken my family to see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs today and laughing enough that I embarrassed my dear wife. About two minutes into the movie I had a feeling that this was a bit Wile E. Coyote and by the middle I realized that Blue Sky Studios, based in the far-from-Hollywood Greenwich, Connecticut, was basically taking all the best animation gag values from Warner Bros/Looney Tunes and turning it into 3D graphics. If I had any doubt, the Porky Pig-esque closing iris shot made it clear.

If you want great animated story, a Pixar tale is best for you. The first ten minutes of Up is more poignant than any animated family flick I've ever seen. If you want sight gags, elastic physical humor and throwaway jokes for the adults in the audience, Ice Age 3 delivers. Now, I've never seen the first two, and we saw this one in regular 2D, not with the glasses. And I was grateful for that.

My theory is that movies already are 3D. The glasses are basically a gimmick, not really deepening the emotion of any story. The conquering of 2D space with 3D perspective is the historic project of Western art, and the best movies feels 3D -- think the tracking shots in the ballroom in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons. The battle scenes of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. The sudden dollies-in of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. Would any of those be enhanced by 3D vision, or would we just get weary, as tends to happen over the length of even the best 3D picture. And I'd argue that Coraline was the best use of 3D projection I've seen to date. Maybe that one was o.k.

What the intent of 3D projection has done for the good, however, is made a 2D screening of the new Ice Age movie visually very dynamic. 2D filmmakers can take lessons from the 3D technique and make their shooting more...three dimensional.

But beyond the visuals, the new character in this one is a buccaneer played by Simon Pegg, a weasel named Buck. His dialogue is the best, very Ahab/Moby Dick, the kind of "helper character" rogue that enlivens adventure stories with gung-ho humor.

So sue me if I enjoyed this movie currently scoring a 42% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The IMDB crowd knows it's a highly respectable 7.6. Not an earthshaker, and maybe only worth seeing if you either need a family movie that you can enjoy along with (or more than) your kids, or if you're a Looney Tunes fan.

Hey, it's no Transformers.