Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)

Image credit: Blue Sky Studios

SCRAT PATROL In a good year for 3-D animation, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs isn't the most highly evolved of the species

Voices of: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah
Directed by: Carlos Saldanha
Release date: July 1

Don't bother wondering how dinosaurs can show up in the third Ice Age movie, which takes place millions of years after they all went extinct. ''Yeah, we took a little creative liberty,'' chuckles Saldanha (Ice Age: The Meltdown). Sid the sloth (Leguizamo) falls into an ''underground world of the dinosaurs that was always there but nobody ever knew about,'' he explains. When Manny the woolly mammoth (Romano) and the rest of the gang go in after him, they encounter a weasel named Buck (Simon Pegg), the only mammal who's been living among the reptilian dinos, albeit Heart of Darkness-style. Says the director, ''He's kind of like Indiana Jones meets Colonel Kurtz.''