Peter Machen on ‘The Croods’

Film: The Croods
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2013
Director: Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders
Screenwriters: John Cleese, Chris Sanders and Kirk De Micco
Starring the voices of: Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Cloris Leachman
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥½

Sometimes a film doesn’t have to do very much in order to entertain. The new Dreamworks movie The Croods, which tells the story of a Neanderthal family emerging from the shadows of cave life into the bright possibilities of a world called tomorrow has a plot that is so thin and flimsy that it verges on non-existence. Yet, for once that’s okay. The film is so beautifully animated, and the continually shifting landscape which the Croods occupy in their journey from constrained survival to a world filled with nominal meaning so gorgeously rendered, that the surface of the film is sufficiently engaging without having to provide any depth at all.

The Croods centres on Eep, an adolescent cave girl who is frustrated by her family’s dogged refusal to engage with life outside of their cave, and by their deeply ingrained fear of anything that is new or interesting. While her father and mother, Grug and Ugga (gamely voiced by Nicolas Cage and an underused Catherine Keener), along with her irritating brother (Clark Duke), feral baby sister and invincible grandmother (Cloris Leachman) all huddle together in the cave, Eep climbs the cliffs outside, glancing with longing at the world beyond.

But when Eep meets a lonesome, wandering boy named Guy (voiced by Ryan Reynolds), her world begins to change. And when Guy’s prophecy of an extinction-level disaster starts to come true, the Crood family’s world shifts dramatically as they are forced to leave the cave and head for higher ground.

In this age of hyper-saturated narratives which twist and turn this way and that, The Croods is profoundly linear, a simple road movie in which its characters move from point a to point b, surmounting physical obstacles along the way. There’s a dash of ongoing family drama – Grug feels threatened by all the newness of their adventure and particularly by the presence of man-boy Guy – and the characterisation is strong enough to make us care about Eep and her dysfunctional family. But The Croods‘ real strength is simply an overwhelming sweetness that is tinged with just enough darkness to take the edge off its saccharine nature. Essentially eye candy with a heart of gold and a slightly wicked sense of humour, it’s so perfectly realised that this simple formula works a treat.

The Croods is also that rarest of animated films in that it doesn’t have a villain. Sure, there are a few wild creatures who might want to eat the Croods, but at no point is that survival-based desire turned into anything resembling evil. And although the film does have a message at its core (get out of your cave and don’t be afraid of anything that’s new), at the same time it feels gloriously message-free, and also, it should be said, deliciously free of the ironic references to pop culture that are so prevalent in the Dreamworks canon.

Of course, there is one very obvious reference – one which The Croods wears with grace. The film feels a lot like an updated Flintstones that is slightly less dependent on gender stereotypes. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table – in fact it’s startlingly unoriginal – but it’s rendered with such joy and precision, and the cartoonish world it creates is so utterly believable, that I found myself surrendering to its cuteness and visual beauty with very little reluctance.

A small, stupid and utterly engaging triumph that tugged at my heartstrings with pure visual magic rather than manipulative writing. I loved it, and it wasn’t even that good. That’s how good it was.