Review: The Croods

The title refers to a prehistoric family, whose cautious patriarch Grug (voiced by Nic Cage) refuses to let the clan leave their cave aside from finding food, because…dinosaurs. And if not dinosaurs, then other beasties that like to eat smaller things that move. Grug’s motto is ‘Always be afraid’. The clan also includes a mother (voiced by Catherine Keener), a baby named Sandy, an aptly named son Thunk (voiced by Clark Duke), a grandmother (voiced by the amazing Cloris Leachman), and a rebellious teenage daughter Eep (voiced by Emma Stone). Eep wants more to life than the cave, she craves the outside world, and sneaks out one night, attracted by a bright light. The light turns out to be fire, something Eep knows nothing about. But hunky Guy (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) certainly does. But before the two have any chance to consider a teenage caveman romance, the ground beneath them starts to crack, destroying the Crood family home. Looks like they’re all gonna have to brave it in the wide open world now, with Guy continually showing up Grug with his ingenuity.

 

The notion of a caveman animated movie featuring the vocal stylings of Nic Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, and Clark Duke (Surely the creepiest actor who isn’t meant to be creepy) seemed like my idea of hell, to be honest. Having now seen this 2013 film from DreamWorks and co-writer/co-directors Kirk De Micco (“Space Chimps”) and Chris Sanders (“Lilo & Stitch”, “How to Train Your Dragon”), I find myself with quite a few positive things to say about it. It’s no “Rango”, and it’s not even the best animated film of 2013, but it’s a fun film, and behind “Rango”, the best-looking animated movie post-“Toy Story”. If it weren’t for the largely bland characters and forgettable voice acting, it would’ve been a real winner, actually.

 

We start off in very cute fashion with a cell animation cave painting type deal, which is nice. But once the film starts proper, we get some seriously beautiful, colourful animation. It’s much closer in style to “Rango” than other computer animated films, where the characters are a tad hyperreal or exaggerated, but texture-wise, it’s pretty photorealistic and looks more like seriously advanced stop-motion than animation, if anything. In other words, you almost feel like you can reach out and touch things on screen.

 

The visuals are definitely the best thing in the film, as everything else is a bit lacking. Chiefly the voices. The only voices I even immediately recognised were Nic Cage and Ryan Reynolds, but that’s not a problem. The problem is, none of their voices proves remotely interesting. In fact, as much as I found it a bit of an act of mercy that Cage was amazingly restrained by the animation film genre, the fact is, it renders him pretty bland. Catherine Keener fares worst of all, as her character is distressingly useless and underused. I’m not remotely an Emma Stone fan, but her Bam-Bam ish character fares best of all. It’s kind of amusing to find a bored and tempestuous teenage girl in this kind of situation, really.

 

The film’s premise is a cute one: Seemingly the last caveman family around trying to survive their extremely harsh world. However, it has to be said that at times it feels like “Ice Age” with humanoids at the centre. Having said that, though, the final fifteen minutes or so are really quite wonderful, even a little affecting. I honestly didn’t expect much out of this film, but I ended up quite enjoying it, and it certainly looks fabulous.

 

The screenplay is based on a story by De Micco, and of all people John Cleese. Apparently the film was originally intended to be a Claymation collaboration between DreamWorks and Aardman Animations (The British Claymation specialists), but Cleese moved on when Aardman pulled out, so how much of his input is in the final product is up for debate I guess.

 

Rating: B-