Review of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) by Chads — 01 Jul 2009

[***SELF-CONTAINED SPOILER ALERT***] Sloths matter too. The sloth is so important to the wooly mammoth, he brings his pregnant wife along on a rescue mission to find Sid(John Leguizamo), the sloth with a gender-identity disorder, who was last seen in the clutches of a mama T.

rex. As it turns out, Buck(Simon Pegg), the Captain Ahab-like weasel, of all "people", makes the salient point that Manny(Ray Romano), the expectant father-to-be, is risking it all for a sloth, and an emotionally unstable one at that.

After all, he's a dinosaur-napper. In response to the wooly mammoths' marital bliss, and looming inception of a calf, Sid turns to his maternal side(despite being a dude) and steals three eggs from an unguarded nest in an ice cave(which makes him the Pleistocene era equivalent of a felon), just like a barren woman at her most desperate.

Women who snatch children out of baby carriages employ their own skewered cognizance of the situation in order to justify the exploit, which frees them from owning up to the crime. This seems to be the case with Sid.

The sloth is no Anna Paquin(in Carroll Ballard's "Fly Away Home"); he sees what he wants to see. If Sid had a more paternalistic side, procreation via f***ing a fairer sloth would be his main concern, not raising somebody else's children(he'd also eat the eggs).

During his existential crisis, the sloth talks about looking for a new herd, without any mention of finding a mate. Interestingly enough, the sloth gives an unsuspecting ram a hand job(inspired by Peter and Bobby Farrelly's "Kingpin"), which Sid claims was a case of mistaken identity, as he was merely trying to satiate his kids' thirst for fresh milk.

"Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs", albeit heavily bent towards action over story, does contain the inspiring message that sloths matter, even better, that ambiguous sloths matter too. But unfortunately, the film is hopelessly patriarchial.

Although Sid took the T. rex's children, she forgives him, much too easily, and even made to suffer the sloth's own parental advice on what her babies should eat.