The best Nicolas Cage role in years.
What They Say:
“The Croods” is a prehistoric comedy adventure that follows the world’s first family as they embark on a journey of a lifetime when the cave that has always shielded them from danger is destroyed. Traveling across a spectacular landscape, the Croods discover an incredible new world filled with fantastic creatures – and their outlook is changed forever.
The Review:
Admittedly, CG movies like this are not high on my must-see list. Often I end up passing on them and my kids see them with others so that I don’t have to. It’s not that I don’t like this, it’s just that, like this one, they’re so short and feel like they’re not worth the value of ticket prices (and concessions) to go and see them. The Croods had me a bit more on the fence as I liked the idea, the comedy aspect of it that was presented in the trailers and some of the people involved in it. With some of the folks involved coming from How To Train Your Dragon, there was a bit more hope for this one in presenting something fun. And I also rather liked that unlike so many other kids fare these days, it’s an actual family unit involved, not dead parents, single parents or something else.
The film revolves around a pre-history family named the Croods, the last in the area as all the others have been killed off in different ways. The family is lead by Grug (Nicolas Cage) who has kept them alive all this time by being afraid of everything. Everything. Anything new is bad and could lead to them getting killed, so he certainly has his reasons. His wife Ugga (Catherine Keener) generally goes along with it because she’s an adult and realizes it makes sense based on her experience. The eldest daughter, Eep (Emma Stone) craves a chance to live outside of the cave they spend most of their time huddled in, but she just needs to learn the rules of survival according to Grug. In addition to them, we get the eldest son Thunk (Clark Duke), Sandy (Randy Thom) and the mother-in-law (Cloris Leachman) that Grug is always goping will die off sometime so he can be rid of her at last.
Life as a neanderthal in this time period is pretty difficult and we get a good look at it early on with plenty of modernisms thrown in as they hunt for food, deal with the various varmints and more dangerous predators out there and spend their times hiding in the darkness of the cave where Grug tries to make the best of it. He’s simply so intent on keeping them alive and safe that they’re not living, which he just can’t grasp. Eep pushes his buttons a lot as she has the whole rebellious teenager thing going on, but they thankfully don’t make her completely evolved compared compared to the rest of the family. She has plenty of animalistic aspects to herself here that comes out, but she also craves something more and has dreams and hopes. Which Grug does his best to crush. Seeing the family unit here, you can understand where Eep comes from, but there’s some positives in how they all work together and really do care about each other, so it’s not a family that’s really full of tension, hate or loathing.
Where things change is when Eep sneaks out one night after seeing the sun in the middle of the night. It’s really fire that she’s seeing and it’s something that was brought there by Guy (Ryan Reynolds), an evolved young man filled to the brim with ideas and dreams. And a mission. He’s intent on getting to a place where he can ride the sun to tomorrow because the area they’re in is falling apart as the continents split, causing lots of earthquakes and plenty of death. Eep is enamored with him from the start because of a number of things, starting with the fire of course, but also because he has all these ideas and a worldly feeling about him. That sets off a lot of confrontation when the rest of the family finds out about it, particularly with Grug, but it’s short lived overall because the earthquakes are hitting and the Croods home is destroyed. Forcing them on an early cross country family trip to try and find someplace new to live.
The film is pretty straightforward with what it wants to do in terms of being basically a trip based movie, but it’s one that has plenty of fun and quirks along the way. The end of their cave has the expected and amusing revelation of the fascinating world that was right behind them, but it’s one fraught with a lot of dangers. It puts Grug in a good place as Guy sort of leads them along (albeit in a wooden trunk that Grug carries), but surviving this new land means trying new things and experimenting in order to progress. Which is not Grug’s strength. With the size of the family here, plus Guy and his belt (a hilarious animal creature character that steals the movie at times), there’s a lot of different interactions that goes on. Grug’s attempts and hopes of offing his mother-in-law is quite a bit of fun and seeing the way Sandy, the runt of the group, is basically a trained animal that is like a little hunter. Ugga doesn’t make out too well in the film, but she has her moments and provides some of the heart of the film at times.
But it’s Eep and Guy that really keep it moving at times as she’s just enthralled with him and he doesn’t quite realize at times that she’s not as evolved as he is. There’s a fun connection between the two, but it’s one that’s a little tenuous at times, especially since Grug is always doing his best to keep them apart. He’s got the protective father thing down well and continually sees Guy as a threat. There’s a lot of good comedy that comes from the dynamic between these three and it does manage to evolve along the way. Grug and Guy have something rare on screen these days in a man and a young man talking about their lives in a way that felt meaningful. Grug also gets to evolve a bit in his thinking, and idea making, which brings him some time alone where at first we see his frustration over Guy and then later realizes just what a great family he has and that Guy is definitely now a part of it.
Visually, there’s a lot to like here as it goes for an approach that makes the characters fun and different but also adds in a variety of decent critters to populate the world with. Grug gets the classic oversized caveman approach, which is contrasted with the way Guy looks as a thin and smart guy. Eep is also a welcome change as she’s the teenager but isn’t rail thin like a Barbie doll but has some muscle and angles to her that presents a better body image than we usually get for something like this. The first third of the film has everyone dealing with the dry mountainous and desert like area they reside in, so it’s pretty drab for the most part outside of a few good areas of color. But when it introduces them to this new land right behind them, it comes alive. And that helps to symbolize the way their minds are coming to life as well since there’s so much to take in and process and they really have to – with Guy’s help – in order to survive.
Performance wise, everyone turns in something solid here, even if a bit predictable. Ryan Reynolds gets to play it straight since he’s a thinking man here and there’s not a lot of hugely needed emoting, though he handles the comedy well. Nicolas Cage has a lot of fun with Grug and it’s like he was born to play it as he has an earthiness and weariness to it that fits the character well. I was a bit disappointed with Cloris Leachman’s casting simply because it just makes the character hugely predictable in terms of tone, so there were no surprsises or stretching of the character going on here through the performance. If there’s an area that I really don’t know how I feel about, it’s Emma Stone as Eep. I like Emma Stone a lot and her voice is distinctive because of the manner in which she talks, but it felt like she wasn’t properly cast for this. Her voice felt out of place and some of the more physical noises she has to make just didn’t blend well, especially early on in the film.
In Summary:
I didn’t have high expectations for The Croods, but it was a movie I was looking forward to watching and enjoying. Like a lot of these movies, it’s over quick and paints a relatively simple picture with some things that makes it fun for the adults in the audience to watch. It’s well animated and has a good flow, knowing when to slow down and when to just barrel through things with some creative direction. But with a movie like this, you have to see how it plays in front of an audience, a family audience, to see what they take from it. I saw this in a pretty packed Saturday night showing with lots of young kids and their parents and the kids were completely into it, especially in the third act. The parents enjoyed it a lot as well by all appearances and it’s a solid family movie, though one that doesn’t challenge as much as it could which is why it’s not just a movie an adult would wander into all that easily. Not that they don’t, but it’s definitely geared more towards the family audience. With this 2D showing, it was definitely fun but it’s that balance of cost versus value, especially depending on the size of the family going to see it, but it’s worth catching in some form.
Grade: B-