UPDATE: Mommy had to go out of town last weekend, so I decided to spoil Bre as much as possible. I’ll write more about that in a separate post, but one of the things we did was make an encore visit to Ice Age 3. We went to the 3D version again, and this time Bre adjusted much more quickly. She was still a little scared of the T-Rex and the “BIG BIG Crocodile Dinosaur” as she calls it, but she did great in the theater and got over those scenes quickly. I was glad to catch up on the plot of the story and had fun seeing the scenes I missed the first time around. Bre told her teachers at daycare all about this and our other daddy-daughter adventures on Monday. 
[end of update]
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Yesterday, Eva and I decided it was time to take Breanna to the movie theater for the first time. But this was no ordinary 1st trip to the movies…
Bre’s first big-screen experience involved full-throttle sensory overload. Ice Age 3 was an action-packed Digital 3-D computer animated thrillride complete with mammoths, a saber-toothed tiger, a pterodactyl troop, a T-Rex, some kind of monster dinosaur that Bre named “the BIG BIG alligator dinosaur” and much more.
Disclaimer: I’m not really qualified to offer a full review of this movie because we missed the first half of it (due to a longer than expected meeting for parents at Bre’s daycare to explain the changes about to occur when she transitions to the next age-group classroom next week … important info that took priority over our movie plans, but that’s a story for another time). We didn’t think it was too big of a deal to get there late because we weren’t even sure Bre was going to last more than 5 minutes in the theater. We knew one of two things would happen: Either she would be terrified and we would be flushing the money spent on our tickets down the drain after a few minutes, or she would love the movie and throw a fit when the movie ended.
Granted, our timing couldn’t have been worse. According to my brother-in-law and his girlfriend (who got there on time), we missed a lot of the funny and less suspenseful parts of the movie by getting there late. And we came in at probably the scariest part of the movie for a child: A scene where the big T-Rex was chasing the stars of the movie and the theater sound system was booming and blasting at maximum capacity.
Bre was definitely startled (to put it mildly) in the beginning. For the first 5 minutes she was whining softly, although she never started actually crying. For the first 10 minutes, she jumped at each boom of the theater speakers. But after about 15 minutes, she settled in and started narrating the things happening on screen. Look daddy! Three baby dinosaurs! Look daddy! A squirrel! Look daddy, a lion bird! (That was my favorite, by the way). You remember that flying dinosar you learned about in elementary school called a pterodactyl, right? Well, they were in this movie, but there was also a meaner version of the pterodactyl dinosaur in the film. These bad boys had similar-looking bodies and wings, but they had razor-sharp teeth instead of normal beaks. Bre named these flying villians “Lion Birds!” I thought that was so cute, and it made sense to me. It’s amazing how kids use their limited knowledge to label new things that they discover, isn’t it? Maybe someone who reads this post can tell me what kind of dinosaur those were.
Don’t worry, we weren’t those parents who take their kids to the movies and let them talk through the whole thing and disturb the other guests. Since we were at the theater on a Wednesday night, there were fewer than 10 groups in the whole place, and all of them had small kids who were talking about the dinosaurs with the adults. So, no harm done.
As far as my advice goes, I do recommend this movie to parents with small kids, but with one disclaimer. For some odd reason, it seems like a lot of animated movies for kids include a few scary characters and scenes (think about the shark scene in Finding Nemo and Ursula in The Little Mermaid, to name a few). Ice Age 3 is no exception. There are a few scenes that I would have left out if I were creating this movie with 3-year-olds in mind. But of course, these are the same scenes that add to the entertainment for older kids and adults. Anyways, here is my advice:
* Note to Parents: Be ready to cover your kids’ eyes during the dinosaur chase scenes. Otherwise, nightmares might be in your children’s near futures.
But overall, I thought the 2nd half of the movie was funny and entertaining and the 3-D graphics were incredible. I think we might end up forking out some more cash to watch this one in its entirety before it leaves the theaters. By the time it ended, Breanna was loving it. We actually had to stay until the very last credit rolled and the screen went pitch black, because Bre wanted to see every last piece of 3-D artwork that accompanied the credits (probably because it looked like 3-D renderings of crayon art created by children).
Have you seen this movie yet? If so, please post your own review in the comments of this post. Thanks!
BRIAN
