Runtime: 1 hour, 31minutes
Rating: PG
Directors: Kirk De Micco, Chris Sanders
Quick Impressions:
I spent the last forty-five minutes of this movie with tears streaming down my cheeks, thinking, “My poor Dad! I’ve got to remember to tell him how much I love him!” Then as the credits rolled, I saw that The Croods was co-written and directed by Chris Sanders and thought, That explains so much. Chris Sanders has known exactly how to make me sob since Lilo and Stitch. He also wrote and directed How to Train Your Dragon, wrote the screenplay for Mulan, and worked on the story for The Lion King. So if Sanders knows anything, it’s how to wring every last drop of bittersweet anguish out of an imperfect family dynamic in a feature length animated film. He also likes truly zany humor.
I went to The Croods expecting a fun evening at the movies with the kids, nothing more. It’s only March, after all, and on the list of things that really excite me, cavemen rank just above…
Hmm.
No matter how I end that sentence, I can’t come up with anything less glamorous than cavemen. (Algae has any number of fascinating, world-changing applications these days.) So, with further thought, cavemen are at the very bottom of the list. I find absolutely nothing in this world less alluring than cavemen.
But The Croods took me by surprise, completely exceeding my expectations. It starts kind of slow but really heats up when Guy enters the picture. The zany humor, colorful action, and family drama all build and build and build until by the end, the audience is laughing hysterically through a torrent of tears as everything beautiful and/or exciting that ever existed explodes dramatically all over the screen in the exhilarating final act.
Basically, it’s a pretty great movie and definitely just as worthy of an animated Oscar as any of last year’s nominees. (Also, Eep’s body shape has me wondering if I have a lot of Neanderthal DNA.)
The Good:
The Croods offers actual laughs and has genuine heart. At first, I found myself smiling vaguely, laughing politely, and tapping my toes appreciatively at a perfect use of the song “Tusk.” But before long, the polite laughter gave way to actual smiles and then outright giggling.
This is a very funny movie. Emma Stone has great comic timing. And, come to think of it, so does Nicolas Cage. (To be honest, Cage’s unusual choices sometimes overshadow the fact that he is a great actor. If his increasingly bizarre filmography has taught us anything, it’s that Cage has the star power and charisma to carry any movie. In fact, without his participation, I’m not sure that some of his more recent choices would technically qualify as movies. Remove the talents of Nicolas Cage, and I’m sure you’ll find at least one video game and possibly a take-out menu lurking somewhere in that endless list of recent titles.)
Together, Cage and Stone anchor The Croods. She gives a dazzling performance from start to finish and comes across as effortlessly charming and endearingly in on many jokes that her naïve character (Eep) doesn’t quite get. Cage has a wonderful (and recognizable) voice for animation and the acting chops to make the dramatic elements of the story work the way that they need to.
The rest of the cast is good, too. The only other voice I recognized while watching was Cloris Leachman as Gran. I couldn’t place Ryan Reynolds as Guy or Catherine Keener as the Mom, but they’re both very good. And I loved Clark Duke as Thunk, awfully sweet and funny for a lunkheaded caveman.
Even though the action-oriented plot—finding a new home in a changing world—is nothing special, the emotional journey the characters make together is exceptionally well done. Nicholas Cage makes Grug so sweet and sympathetic. As a woman, I don’t often think about how difficult it is for a father to see his children growing up, becoming independent, rejecting his authority, venturing into danger. But when I do stop and think about these kinds of transitions from a father’s point of view, it really makes me want to hug my dad (and cry for forty-five minutes, apparently).
As is often the case with successful animated features, this movie is specifically geared toward families and speaking right to parents and young children. Some of the jokes—like the difficulties of keeping everybody moving forward happily on a road trip—are so old they can’t even truly be considered jokes at this point. But still, to an audience full of families with small children, they ring very true and seem pleasantly familiar. The Croods knows its audience, but it offers us something more than silly scatological jokes (in fact, I don’t remember any of those) and brainless slapstick (though there is plenty of slapstick fun to be had). We get a nice little life lesson in favor of progress and hope as well as a genuinely moving story about a changing father/daughter dynamic.
And as we’ve come to expect from Dreamworks, the whole movie looks beautiful.
Best Scene Visually:
The scene that begins with Guy saying, “I want to show you something,” as he leads the others up the tree really, really works. This scene culminates in a moment so satisfying in 2D that I can only imagine the punch it packs in 3D.
Once necessity forces the Croods to venture beyond the safety of their cave, almost everything in the frightening new world that surrounds them is a visual delight.
As is always the case with Dreamworks, the characters’ hair is rendered with astonishing texture. The colors are bright. And the look of the landscape is clever and inventive.
Funniest Scene:
My whole family loved the part with the corn. We all laughed out loud, and at the end, my daughter even made a delighted little exclamation and silently applauded.
After a slow opening sequence (not in terms of action but in terms of jokes and character development), the movie hits its stride and becomes increasingly hilarious. It’s wonderful to watch this movie as we did—in a large, reasonably full house packed with little kids. Children responded so vocally to this film. Peals of high-pitched giggles are from the crowd are worth the price of admission.
Nicolas Cage’s “reinvention of Grug” scene is pretty hilarious, too. At first I was worried that it went too far and broke continuity, but it was so sweet and silly that it finally won me over.
Here and there, some even funnier jokes pop up, but to mention any of them spoils the surprise.
My kids—and most of the others in the theater from the sounds of things—really, really loved Belt’s little ditty of doom. That’s a running joke that might well run right into a sequel.
Best Scene:
The tar scene accomplishes a lot, the shoes scene is hilarious, and both Grug and Thunk’s and Guy’s botched attempts at hunting are loads of fun to watch. But probably the most emotional moment in the movie—the one that really got my husband—comes when Grug starts hurling everybody.
Best Action Sequence:
Just about everything in The Croods is an action sequence because the family is always on the run. The scene when everybody inadvertently splits up is pretty exciting (and often gorgeous). The best bit of action, though, comes at the very end when Grug finally gets an idea.
The Negatives:
This movie is hilarious and moving, but it does take a bit of time to find its stride. I found the opening chase scene set to “Tusk” thoroughly pleasant but a little lacking in oomph. The early moments in the cave—necessary because it’s pretty hard to eschew exposition entirely—are the weakest part of the movie. Until Guy shows up, the movie seems like a pleasant, inoffensive diversion for kids, but nothing really special. And then—though the first Guy/Eep scene injects a much needed spark—the movie kind of loses its sparkle again
until the moment when Guy returns.
Now, I’m not sure what The Croods could do too differently since it’s deliberately trying to draw a marked contrast between the boring, safe, monotonous, fear-motivated existence in the cave, and the kind of fearless, forward-thinking living Guy later champions.
It’s not so much that the early scenes are bad. They’re just not great. And we might not really notice except that the brilliance that comes later on throws the mediocrity of the early scenes into high relief.
But what’s the point of complaining about a movie that starts out fine and only gets better?
If you’re looking for anthropological accuracy, of course, The Croods might not be your cup of tea, but you’re not, right? You do know that this is a Dreamworks animated feature, right?
Overall:
The Croods is a great movie for the whole family that far exceeded my
expectations. Once the movie hit its stride, I found myself laughing consistently. And then I sobbed for almost forty-five minutes straight. Granted, I cry easily and often—I may or may not be crying right now—but this is definitely an effective and entertaining movie with gorgeous animation and great voice work, particularly by Emma Stone and Nicolas Cage. Both our ten-year-old boy and our four-year-old girl remained entranced and engaged throughout its runtime. If you like enjoying stuff and you’re looking for an excuse to come homeand tell your dad how much you love him, then The Croods is the movie for you.