The Croods

Title: The Croods

Director: Kirk De Micco, Chris Sanders

Screenwriter: Kirk De Micco, Chris Sanders

Producer: Kristine Belson, Jane Hartwell

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds

Popcorn Movies Rating: 7

Prehistoric Adventure for the whole family

By: David Maldonado

A prehistoric adventure full of beautiful animated landscapes and constant laugh that makes it perfect for the whole family.

The Croods are cavemen that live inside a cave (dah), and only go out on daylight to find food. One day their lives get upside down when they can’t go back to their cave because of an earthquake. So now they must travel with a very weird guy (Ryan Reynolds) to the unknown world looking for a new home. This journey will test everything the family knows about living and themselves.

The publicity of this movie makes you think that the main character is Eep (Emma Stone), but actually her father Grug (Nicolas Cage), is also a main character. The plot of the story go around this two, everything one of them do affects the other to the point that at a time Grug is more a protagonist than Eep. The fact that this is so makes a different approach on certain themes, like that the message is more for adult parents than for the young audience, which is odd on animated movies.

Of course, the story is not complicated and either deep, but Dreamworks is not known for making that kind of movies. It doesn’t have anything special either, except for the final approach to adults than to kids. But it is fun, full of physic and verbal jokes, which keep the audience laughing all the time. Regularly I wouldn’t say that physical jokes (like punching), are well used and effective, but in this case we are talking about cavemen, brutal force is suppose to be the principal characteristic. So in this movie all the “punch to laugh” is justified and proper to the setting.

The dynamic between the members of the family is very close to a reality. None of us need to go out hunting to survive, but we often fight with our relative. Imagine that you are in a trip with your whole family. Well, all the talking, arguing and everything that drive you crazy about the guy next to you is in this movie. So there are plenty of elements that make this family of the Stone Age similar to modern families. Like the fact that you can fight all you want with your mom, dad, brother or grandma, but in the end you will protect them and give everything for them.

The world where this movie takes place is beautiful and unique. All the things that you encounter aren’t real, the animals, the plants, everything has been invented by the creators with references of real creatures. That puts you in the same spot that the Croods. As they will discover new creatures and explore new worlds, the audience will know the world too. So the audience can’t muck of the fact that the Croods don’t know what kind of animals live on the earth, because they don’t know either what are the species living on that world.

This is a good movie to go and enjoy with the whole family. Kids will love the graphics, the colors, some of them the 3D, and the jokes. Adults will laugh too with the jokes and will have a nice time with the ones they love.