The Croods (DVD REVIEW)
The
Croods
DVD Review
by Kam Williams
Cavemen Explore
Earth in Enchanting Animated Adventure
Are you better off than you were
four million years ago? That’s the evolutionary question playfully posed by The
Croods, a visually-captivating, action-oriented cartoon revolving around an
agoraphobic clan of cave dwellers that summons up the courage to abandon their
home in the face of impending climate change.
The enchanting message movie was
co-directed by Kirk De Micco (Space Chimps) and Chris Sanders (How to Train
Your Dragon) who assembled an ensemble featuring Nicolas
Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds and Cloris Leachman to breathe life into a colorful array of
prehistoric characters. Besides the talented voice cast, the film makes a most
effective use of 3-D technology guaranteed to keep the tykes enthralled for the
duration, whether they’re ducking projectiles aimed directly at their heads or
trying to touch objects dangling just out of reach.
At
the point of departure we find the Croods huddled inside their dank, dark cave
where they sleep in a pile to keep warm at night. The family is presided over
by Grug (Cage), an overprotective patriarch whose mantra is the double-negative
“Never not be afraid!”
The other members of his primitive
brood include naggy mother-in-law Gran (Leachman), long-suffering wife Ugga
(Catherine Keener) and their three kids: feral baby Sandy (Randy Thom),
man-child Thunk (Clark Duke) and rebellious teen Eep (Stone). Grug feels it is
his duty to remind them on a daily basis of the many dangers lurking just
beyond the entrance of their boulder-fortified abode.
That’s why he’s so fond of telling
bedtime stories in which any curiosity about the outside world invariably proves
fatal. Grug’s scare tactics work until the fateful day Eep sneaks off to
explore on her own only to encounter a boy (Reynolds) about her own age.
Not only has handsome Guy figured
out how to harness fire to keep hungry creatures at bay but he forecasts
imminent doom for any humans who fail to move to higher ground. When Eep brings
word of this frightening development to her Neanderthal of a dad, it becomes
abundantly clear that it’s going to take more than a little convincing to get
him to lead the family out of the cave on a perilous trek to safety.
Mother Nature plays a part in
nudging him to grudgingly join forces with Guy, and the ensuing sojourn across
a vast wasteland to Shangri-La allows for a priceless
lesson about risk-taking as relevant in the 21st Century as it must have been
back in the Stone Age. A side-splitting, thrill-a-minute adventure reminiscent
of the best of The Flintstones. Wilma!
Excellent
(4 stars)
Rated PG for scenes of peril
Running time: 96 minutes
Distributor: Dreamworks
Animation / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
DVD Extras: Deleted
scenes; Belt’s Cave Journal; and World of Dreamworks Animation.
To order a copy of The Croods
on DVD, visit:
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