Dreamworks have been steadily upping the quality of their animated kids films for a few years now. On the back of the Kung-Fu Panda movies, we now expected their animated films to be sassy, work for both kids and parents, and to be, well pretty good.
So where does the Croods sit in this? It’s a simplistic story of a family of cavemen (and women) who are forced out of their cave and the life of fear they live in by a mixture of Eep’s dissatisfaction with life and some considerable natural disaster that appears to have been lifted from another Dreamworks film, Ice Age Continental Drift. In fact plot wise, the film is pretty similar to Manny & Co’s adventure.
Eep and her relationship with guy, the clever chap they come across who turns their very narrow world upside down, is the driving focus of the film but it’s Nicholas Cage’s turn as Grug, the fatalistic father of the family, that steals the show completely. It’s Cage at his manic best.
The Croods is basically a fish out of water comedy that uses the natural disaster of the continents separating, to put the family into a lot of unfamiliar situations to often hilarious and always amusing effect. As far as plot goes, that’s pretty much it; paper thin really but the film doesn’t outstay it’s welcome and the slapstick humour helps mitigate this to a large degree. I particularly liked the endless mother in law jokes and frankly could never have tired of them.
The cave art is a nice touch and fairly realistic. The conversations over fire are well thought out (but over the heads of the kids) too. The visuals are lush, especially in 3D, which for once works quite well and you will walk out the cinema having enjoyed yourself. Two or three days later though you’ll find it difficult to put your finger on just exactly what you liked so much. The plot? Unlikely as there isn’t really one. The character development? There isn’t really any. In many ways the Croods is like a Monty Python film- it’s a collection of sketches involving common characters that doesn’t quite hang together as a film in the way it should. That’s not to say it isn’t enjoyable, it is, but you may struggle to work out why you enjoyed it quite so much at a later date. Walking out of the pre-release screening, the first thing I mentioned was the trailer for Epic, which looks fantastic. That says it all really.
