New ‘Ice Age’ cute, cuddly and boring

There’s more action and cuddly creatures for kids to love in “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” than in the animated franchise’s first two installments.

For their parents, it’s more of the same: a “Yawn of the Dinosaurs” adventure with some new faces and places, but the same central characters rehashing the misfits-as-family themes of the first two movies.

The main thing that distinguishes this movie from its predecessors is the setting as the gang of prehistoric animals journeys underground to a lost world of dinosaurs.

Once again, the main players are Manny the woolly mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano); his wife, Ellie (Queen Latifah); Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary); and Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo). Sibling possums Crash and Eddie (Seann William Scott and Josh Peck) also tag along.

With Manny and Ellie expecting their first child, Diego strikes out on his own, sensing he’s lost his predator edge. Sid, feeling left out of Manny’s family circle, adopts three huge eggs he stumbles on in a cavern, becoming surrogate mother to baby tyrannosaurs whose real mom comes to reclaim them, dragging the sloth back underground with her.

So Manny, Ellie, the possums and eventually Diego join up to rescue poor Sid.

This unlikely extended family gains an interesting new cousin in dementedly lovable Buck (Simon Pegg), a weasel who lost an eye to a ferocious dinosaur and has gone all Ahab in his quest to avenge himself on the beast.

Buck steals the movie, Pegg’s lively, looney vocals combining with the character’s lithe and limber movements bring a freshness to his scenes that the rest of the movie lacks.

Even the antics of little Scrat fall flat this time. The rodent whose pursuit of an elusive nut was the highlight of the first movies are tired and strained here as the filmmakers have him alternately fighting and wooing a female counterpart also trying to secure that pesky acorn.

The movie is more detailed, textured and vibrant than the earlier “Ice Age” epochs because the technology and possibilities of computer-generation animation keep getting better. But the dialogue is mostly simple jawboning that doesn’t provide many laughs.

Unlike such wise, witty Pixar Animation tales as “Up” and “WALL-E,” this one’s strictly a slapstick tale for the young ones, who will ooh and aah over all the adorable beasties, new and old.