If you haven’t seen The Croods yet, don’t worry – you’ve probably already experienced all it has to offer in other similar kids’ movies. So unless you have kids who will force you to sit through more of the same old, same old … then don’t bother. In short, your kids will probably love it but if you don’t find it simply more of the same – then lucky you.
You’d be able to find far more entertainment sitting at home and trawling the annals of Cineworld Youtube than you would by going to the cinema to watch Dreamworks Animation’s latest turgid offering. You really do feel like you’ve seen it before – the voices sound the same, the humour base is the same, the morals are the same and it comes out the same as every other kids’ Hollywood production line movie from the past decade or so.
The film is billed as a spectacular 3d animation, but once you’ve seen one – you really have seen them all. The plot basis is that ‘Grug’ (voiced by Nicolas Cage) is the father of a stone-aged of Neanderthal Cavemen family. The only way he manages to keep them all safe is by warning them of the dangers of ever setting foot outside the cave. Sadly, though, his daughter, ‘Epp’ (voiced by Emma Stone) is naturally curious and she’s desperate to explore the outside world. So one night when the family is asleep, she sneaks away and the humdrum adventure begins.
When the family’s cave gets destroyed, she her family embark on the adventure to find a new home and to tell you any more would spoil it for you – so we won’t. The idea is that life really is for living and we should all go out there and grasp it. There’s nothing wrong with the sentiment and on the basis that it’s part of the production cycle – there’s nothing wrong with the movie from a kids’ perspective. But great family films work at more than one level – and this simply doesn’t.
