Review of The Croods (2013) by Tungis G — 26 Jan 2014

Interesting movie from a high level. The animation was superb. Usually when that is the high point of a review it means the movie sucked, and I did not care much for this movie early on. It was too over the top putting it more in the kids movie category than a family movie or hybrid kid/adult movie like Pixar has perfected. In fact I was pretty annoyed as the movie wore on. The premise was neat but poorly executed, the characters were pretty average and I'm not a Nick cage fan at all and his voice acting really didn't fit the main character at all. Things were chaotic and Jar-jar Binks-ish. Ugh! (NPI).

Then about half way through something happens and there is a shift. It is pretty predictable but the fact the early going is so bad might make it seem more "magical". Now I am a sucker for character development flicks so there is that, but it seem the pace of the film slows down toward the end - that usually is a bad thing but in this case it is a great thing. The sincerity of the characters changing is what saves this film for me; I even had to dry an eye or two at the end. SPOILER: This film was a prime candidate for the "Rocky" ending, but alas it follows the trend of "happily ever after" endings that has plagued Hollywood for decades now. I keep waiting for another movie to really be daring enough to go there and if they did that in this movie it would have made it a really, really, really good movie. Never has an opportunity been missed bigger than this; the subject matter and plot vehicles are prime and ready for the main character to not make it to the end and thus cement the lesson of the movie in a great way. If the producers of this movie were brave they could have ended the movie when Grug is alone in the cave at the end doing his cave drawings. From there cut to them calling for him with their shell horns and it's Oscar city.