Review of The Croods (2013) by Jacob — 19 May 2014

The film looks great with its bright colors and there is some decent humor, which will entertain the kids but that’s not enough. This film is meh. Outside of the last third, which is somewhat engaging and heartfelt this movie has little to offer.

The story and characters are generic containing a lot of stuff that I’ve seen before (some of which from other Dreamworks movies) and there is no good humor or hilarious side character to save this movie.

This is disappointing since Chris Miller was working on this movie and he has worked on such Disney films as Mulan along with Dreamworks hits like How to Train Your Dragon. I can kind of feel his touch but not really.

Maybe he wasn’t that involved in it though. I heard that originally Aardman was going to make this film but when their deal with Dreamworks ended they got to make the movie instead of Aardman, which is a shame because I would have loved to have seen what Aardman’s version would have been like because knowing them it would have had a lot more heart like Arthur Christmas (which is a great film) and/or humor like Pirates Band of Misfits.

Even so this is coming from a studio that has made some pretty good movies such as the first two Shrek movies, How To Train Your Dragon, the Kung Fu Panda films, and most recently Rise of the Guardians.

I am shocked that this movie is getting a sequel because this doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that would catch on. I don’t know anyone who saw it and it wasn’t getting that much buzz. However, obviously there are a bunch of little kids that saw this film and liked it and I won’t blame them because there are a lot of mediocre films I saw as I kid that only recently upon a repeated viewing am I realizing are crap (like the Ice Age films).

So if you have kids show them this movie it will entertain them but if you are looking for that exceptionally good animated film this ain’t it.