The Croods 3D Movie Review
Title failure.
I get the joke. Crood = crude as in neanderthals. However, the title literally says nothing about the film and is a made up word that sounds like it could be mistaken for a weird sexual sub culture like cloppers or steampunks. Also do you want the word crude in your title if you movie is not about oil? Most kids movie titles have a simple description in them. Toy Story was a story about toys. Finding Nemo was about finding a fish named Nemo. Cars was about cars. You get the picture.
Title aside, how was the movie? Not bad. Definitely leaned more towards kids than adults in the humor section, but Dreamworks does know how to craft an animated movie. Honestly I would say it was slightly less than I had hoped for but at least in the range of what I expected. 
The humor and story didn’t have all the adult appeal that a better film such as the Incredibles would include (Incredibles logo from the Cartoon T Shirt category) but there was the attempt. It’s definitely a movie that pretty much anyone on the planet of almost any age can enjoy, which is what all “family” movies look for.
Kids movies are hard to review. As I have stated before I don’t do my usual stars/black holes routine for them as I think quantifying a kids movie is a waste of time. If I were to hit this movie for specific annoyances one thing that would definitely hit them for would be the sound track. I don’t know who they got to produce the music (oh, wait. Yes I do. Thank you IMDB. Alan Sivestri-the Avengers, Captain America, Beowolf) but he must have been watching a lot of 70’s porn lately (actually that kind of makes sense when you consider Ron Jeremy looks a lot like a cave man. By the way if you just laughed you are officially a degenerate). The music is intrusive as hell and really got on me. It’s not all 70’s porn but rather a mishmash of bad choices all designed to get on my jock. I rarely notice a soundtrack in any movie I see so when I do you know it’s bugging me.
I will say I was pleased to see a role that Nicolas Cage could get behind and do really well with. His last couple of movies have not been where you would imagine a career spanning 3 decades would want to go.
The story is of the Croods, a family of cave men (and women) who live in a cave and spend their lives in fear of everything outside, which for the most part all wants to eat them. The father Grug (Nicolas Cage-Drive Angry, Season of the Witch, Valley Girl) teaches his family that anything new is to be feared and their best chance to be safe is to never leave the cave except when looking for food. The rest of the family (wife Ugga (Catherine Keener-Into the Wild, Being John Malkovich, the 40 Year Old Virgin), son Thunk (Clark Duke-Kick Ass, Hot Tub Time Machine, Sex Drive), grandmother Gran (Cloris Leachman-Young Frankenstein, the Iron Giant, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), baby Sandy (Randy Thom-the Incredibles, How to Train Your Dragon, Forrest Gump)) all agree with him with the exception of teenage daughter Eep (Emma Stone-Crazy, Stupid Love, Zombieland, the Help) who wants to explore. She sneaks out one night and meets Guy (Ryan Reynolds-Green Lantern, the Change Up, Safe House), a more advanced human who has the secret to fire. He tells her that the world is coming to an end and they have to get to higher ground or something.
Now go rent Ice Age: the Meltdown and you have the rest of the movie. The family has to keep moving to stay ahead of the wall of impending doom while overcoming assorted prehistoric (sort of. Not sure if this is supposed to be Earth at all. I don’t recall giant birds with four wings or rodents with two heads connected by a long tail from my Natural History class) obstacles. Grug is threatened by the presence of Guy while Eep has the hots for him. Lots of comic relieve shows up, as well as a ton of cute future plush toys.
Like I said I won’t do the whole star/black hole thing. I judge kids movies by how the kids in the audience seem to be acting and for the most part they all appeared to be enjoying it. None of them got bored and started acting out, so I guess if you are trying to keep your children entertained you could do a lot worse. Would I want to take my non-existant children to see it? Probably. Nothing to damage their tender brains (or my toughened one for that matter). Funny enough to keep mom and dad entertained but not so engrossing that if one of you wanted to bunk out for a smoke and make a phone call or three you would miss much. I predict this DVD will grace many a family entertainment collection in order to keep the kids out of your hair. By the way, the 3D was remarkably ineffective for an animated film.
Date movie? Sure, for mom and dad with kids. The movie isn’t so amazing or iconographic that a single girl you are courting will get turned on by it (plus no princesses). Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere, but the best place is probably when the family is up in the tree resting and Grug is trying to come up with ideas.
Thenks for reading. I might not be able to post again until Tuesday. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Post comments on this film or my review here, and if you have an off topic question or comment feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
