Review of The Croods: A New Age (2020) by Nateed — 13 Aug 2021

The Croods: A New Age doesn’t live up to the first film and feels like a downgrade. The first film was such a delight with lots of heart and fun. The sequel feels like a watered-down version of the first with a lot more jokes that diminish the story.

A lot of that comes down to the story which isn’t that great. The story feels so bland with little to no substance. Some of the plot points are actually a bit laughable and just aren't that great. The plot points also feel borderline cliche and don’t really feel all that original.

There are even plot points that were reused from the first film. Grug’s whole character arc in this film is the same one as the first film. There is no change whatsoever that leads the film to feel so uninspired.

There are some great messages like girl power and acceptance, but they either make it too in your face or too discreet. There isn’t a good balance of ideas around the film. A lot of that has to do with the pacing which is just so bad.

This movie is so fast and doesn’t take the time to flesh out ideas. Each scene is gone through so fast that it doesn’t feel like the characters are becoming better or worse. Speaking of the characters, they are really poorly handled in this film.

A lot of the characters feel half-baked with nothing special about them. The film focuses too much on Grug and Phil that the other character arcs feel washed down with no substance to them. Yes, the film is entertaining, but a movie needs to tell a good story with good characters at the same time which this film doesn’t do.

What didn’t disappoint was the animation. The animation is such a step-up from the first film and really makes all the creative, visual ideas look so amazing. The Bettermans’ land is just so vibrant and has so many different colors filling up the screen.

I do wish that the character designs stayed a little bit closer to the original character designs from the first movie just because it was a little hard to adjust seeing how features were changed to fit the new animation.

However, once getting used to that, the animation just shines throughout the movie. I once again loved the voice cast. Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds really knock it out of the park and know how to make their characters feel unique.

Nicolas Cage did a great job despite his character being severely flawed. Catherine Keener was also a delight to hear and her performance of Ugga was just as great as the first film. Kelly Marie Tran was such a lovely addition to the cast.

She too made the character her own. It wasn’t “Kelly Marie Tran voicing a teenage girl”. It was Kelly Marie Tran making Dawn a very unique and special character. Peter Dinklage and Leslie Mann were also spectacular in this.

Something Dreamworks does the best at is putting together an amazing voice cast which I think The Croods franchise shows the best. Overall, The Croods: A New Age is a step-down from its predecessor. It never feels like anything special like the first film.

The humor really takes over this film which is very sad to see. With very little support from the script department, the film relies heavily on its amazing voice cast and breathtaking animation. When you take those two positives away, you get just a big ball of undeveloped fluff.

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