Remember how terrific the original Ice Age movie was?

That was then.

This is now.

Alas.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a dull, talky undertaking, a preachy bit of animated entertainment that will bore even the trusting little children you drag along with you to see it.

Silliness and adventure has given way in this third installment to meaningless action sequences and milquetoast talk about family and parenting.

The woolly mammoth pair, Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) are expecting a baby.

This leads to statements along the lines of, "Being a parent is a lot of work. Maybe I'm not ready," leading a viewer to wonder -- "Why would I give a rat's backside about the insecurities of various talking animals?"

This is not a good sign.

The annoying sloth, Sid (John Leguizamo), is at the centre of the action this time around. Sid feels excluded by Manny and goes off to find a new family of his own. He discovers some dinosaur eggs in an ice crevasse and steals them; when they hatch, they believe Sid to be their mother and love him accordingly. Awwww.

Too bad their T-Rex mommy, not at all extinct, is on their trail.

Sid takes his newborn dino babies to the playground, where they play rough and try to eat the other children.

It's a scene both macabre and pedantic (on the anti-bully front), and that's quite an accomplishment, really, if you think about it.

But don't.

When Sid gets grabbed by the T-Rex mommy and vanishes into an underground world, Manny and Ellie go to rescue him.

They enter an underground world of greenery where dinosaurs still flourish. Their perilous journey is guided by a crazed weasel named Buck (Simon Pegg), and Buck works his way through danger of every kind. (The movie keeps referencing other movies with little visual jokes, but it's not really clear what it all means. Is that a nod to The Peacemaker? 40 Year Old Virgin? Rescuers Down Under? Wha?)

There's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in dinosaur land, but not to any real purpose.

The action sequences are glued together with sober talk about family, friendship, eating too many calories (?) and being a parent.

With Friends in endless reruns, you can hear that kind of drivel any day of the week in your own home.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, Scrit, the frantic sabre-toothed squirrel, continues to pursue his acorn up and down the countryside. This time, he encounters a pretty female sabre-toothed squirrel, and they run around together, competing for the acorn.

You so won't care.

The sabre-toothed tiger, Diego (Denis Leary), has almost nothing to do in this film except worry that he's outlived his usefulness.

He may be on to something.

(This film is rated PG)

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