I like Scrat. You like Scrat. We all, apparently, like Scrat.

But no one, I suspect, likes the saber-toothed cartoon squirrel � who, along with his beloved, ever-out-of-reach acorn, made only brief appearances in both of the first two �Ice Age� films � enough to want to watch a whole movie about him. Nevertheless, there he is, popping up seemingly every 10 minutes in �Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,� the third and barely funny installment in the series of animated features about the prehistoric adventures of Manny (voice of Ray Romano), Diego (Denis Leary) and Sid (John Leguizamo), a woolly mammoth, saber-toothed tiger and ground sloth stuck in a snowbound world.
Scrat�s annoying ubiquity � compounded by the appearance of a new female love interest, Scratte (Karen Disher) � is just one piece of evidence that �Dawn of the Dinosaurs� has been focus-grouped and is now trying to please its presumed young audience a little more than is healthy. Others include jumping on the digital 3-D bandwagon and introducing not one, but three, adorable baby T. rexes.
Of course, there�s nothing wrong with cute. And there is a little vinegar to temper all that sugar. Simon Pegg makes a nice acerbic addition to the cast as Buck, a leathery, one-eyed weasel who carries a sharpened dino tooth for a dagger and who acts as a native guide when our heroes discover a lushly tropical world of still-living dinosaurs hidden under all that ice.
That�s right. Never mind the improbable physics and imaginative paleontology of that scenario (let alone the fact that the Ice Age seemed to be over in the last sequel, �Ice Age: The Meltdown�). Logic should never stand in the way of squeezing one more chapter out of a popular movie franchise.
What propels Manny and company underground is the pursuit of Sid, who�s been abducted by the mama T. rex after Sid attempts to raise her three offspring in a fit of misplaced parental instincts. It seems that even Sid wants babies, especially after Manny�s woolly-mammoth consort, Ellie (Queen Latifah, introduced in the last film), is discovered to be with child.
Complicating matters is the arrival of Rudy, the nasty beastie who took Buck�s eye and lost a tooth in the deal. Resembling a giant albino crocodile, he�s scary � my 9-year-old son insisted on holding my hand at one point � but he never really feels like anything more than a plot device.
That�s really, in a nutshell, the whole problem with �Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.� It looks like a real movie, all right. And it�s got all the features people want: more Scrat, dino-babies, 3-D and the resurfacing of the themes of family and togetherness that were the hallmark of the first two films.
It�s not utterly without charm, either. Only here, that charm feels less earned than manufactured, a product not of evolution � or even intelligent design � but of cynical, soulless opportunism.