An issue I immediately faced with The Croods involved Nicolas Cage as the voice of Grug, the hulking caveman father of the family Crood. Not because Cage is some kind of terrible voice actor (he’s not), but because he’s a string bean of a human and his voice is so recognizable, to hear it coming out of this character felt wrong and off-putting. I dealt with this for the majority of the film’s first third as directors Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders introduce us not only to the rest of the family, but the Paleolithic world they inhabit.
The Croods believe themselves to be the last of the cavemen on Earth, creating a sense of urgency and fear of the unknown. To protect his family from the dangers outside, Grug forces them to pile into their cave at any hint of danger. For his wife (voiced by Catherine Keener), mother-in-law (voiced by Cloris Leachman) and dimwitted son Thunk (voiced by Clark Duke) this is the natural order of things, but for Eep (voiced by Emma Stone), his teenaged daughter, it’s torture. She dreams of exploring and finding new things and living her life rather than merely surviving.
Eep’s lust for something more ultimately results in meeting a lone wanderer named Guy (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) who warns her of the dangers to come as the Earth is shifting. Initially Grug is wary of Guy for the same reasons any father would be, but also because Guy’s advice is to leave the safety of their cave… a choice Grug will soon have to make after an earthquake finds their home destroyed.
As the Croods journey across terrain foreign to them, fraught with new dangers and new wonders, the issues I had with Cage’s voice accompanying Grug’s features began to wain and the story itself began to pick up. Ultimately this is a story about a father and daughter and knowing when to let go and when to embrace change. This isn’t a new theme by any stretch, but the characters in The Croods feel unique enough to keep you interested and curious at each turn. The only obvious comparison would be to “The Flintstones” and that’s hardly a comparison worth making.
Sanders and De Micco not only direct, but co-wrote the script. Sanders previously co-wrote and directed How to Train Your Dragon while De Micco’s credits aren’t as exemplary with Space Chimps as his most recent cinematic contribution. Their work here isn’t a total home run, but you can sense there may be something great between the lines. I can’t quite place my finger on what kept me from loving The Croods, but something is holding me back.
Maybe it was the way they played fast and loose with the characters, their surroundings and the prehistoric wildlife. Whales with legs and strange flocks of carnivorous birds are only the start of how they Frankensteined the animals, which didn’t outright bother me, but the lack of a complete understanding of the world I was watching may have been what kept me from getting fully invested.
Beyond Cage I enjoyed the voice work and felt the characters did well to mirror their human counterparts, especially Stone as Eep, Reynolds as Guy (and that’s the American pronunciation, not French) and Leachman as Ugga. I also want to note I’m not coming down on Cage. His voice was only off-putting when it was straight-forward conversation, but when he would fly off the handle at Guy or go into caveman mode it was actually quite funny and by the end I had grown entirely comfortable with the character.
A co-production between Fox and Dreamworks Animation, The Croods features two levels of animation. At one point early on it almost looked like they were going photo-realistic with a giant elephant the Croods commandeered as a getaway vehicle, but for the most part it’s quite cartoony, which is probably the best way to go with an animated comedy centered on cavemen.
Overall, I enjoyed the film, though won’t make any efforts to rush and see it again. I think teenage girls are probably going to get the most out of it and I am almost positive some big teddy bear-type fathers are going to tear up at moments.
