Nothing crude about The Croods

I finally got to watch The Croods, and it's definitely a five-star movie for me! I wanted to watch it because of Emma Stone, but I really didn't know what the plot was all about. With my downtime, I decided to give it a try. No regrets. It even made me teary-eyed

I think the movie, with its timeframe of being during the prehistoric Pliocene era gave it a lot of leeway to introduce a lot of "modern" concepts such as shoes, skateboards, acting, emotions like sensitivity, and love, because we don't really know how "advanced" they were in those times. Despite the available information that we have at our disposal, there are still a lot of things we don't know, and I think Dreamworks played with that lack of knowledge to create something so vibrant and entertaining.

The Croods is about the Croods family who are, by definition, cavemen. They live in caves and they hunt for food, which is very sparse. According to Guy, a thinking prehistoric man, cavemen have huge teeth and excessive hair. The Croods family is composed of Grug the father (played by Nicholas Cage), Ugga the mother (Catherine Keener), Thunk the son (Clarke Duke), Eep the daughter (Emma Stone), Sandy the baby (Randy Thom), Gran (Cloris Leachman), and Guy (Ryan Reynolds).

Eep is the "rebel" as she hates being in the dark and she loves being outside, especially when there is light. Grug, however, believes that they must live in fear, follow tradition, and just keep hiding when it's dark. They should only go out when there is light because of the very harsh conditions that they live in, and so they can survive. They used to have a lot of neighbors, but because Grug is very strong, the Croods survived.

One day, Eep wakes up and sees light, which she initially thought was the sun, shining inside their dark cave. She slips out of the cave to follow the "sun" and stumbles into Guy, who was carrying a torch. Not much is known about Guy, and why he is more civilized than the Croods family. He says he uses what he calls a "brain" to think of ideas to survive their environment. Guy's goal is to reach "Tomorrow," a place where he believes everything will be safe. He thinks this way because his parents told him before they died that things will be better tomorrow.

Grug was initially reluctant to follow Guy, but since their cave dissolves, they are forced to move forward to another place that they discovered, where there are trees and huge animals that were unknown to them. Grug finally agrees to go with Guy when they both see a mountain split into two and an elephant fall to its death. Along the way, the Croods family becomes slightly civilized as Guy teaches them to wear slippers, or to think for themselves. However, Grug started to feel less important to his family as they started to follow Guy's ideas more than his. In the end, Grug realizes that he has to accept that things are changing and that he has to be more fearful if he wants his family to survive.

For a moment, my eyes were threatening to cry a river - but father-daughter moments in films always tend to do me in. I love The Croods because of the fantastic plot, the good message about families, and the beautiful graphics. Of course I know I was watching an animated film, but it really captured my imagination and I kept thinking, "oh my gosh, what if this was real? What if this really happened?!" The Croods is kind of like Ice Age, only with humans and with a different era, but with the same end-of-the-world theme, and the characters trying to adapt to their ever-increasing environment despite their fear of change and the unknown.

The budding romance between Eep and Guy was not given a definite conclusion, but it was cute to see them slowly grow close. Eep was immediately enamored of Guy since he was the first non-family teenage boy that she met. Guy was not as quick to return her feelings, but he was an all-around nice guy. Emma Stone was just perfect for the story! I cannot imagine another voice that could play Eep. I'm not saying Emma Stone has a cavewoman voice, but rather that she voiced the part of a teenage rebel with a heart rather well. Ryan Reynolds was a surprise for me; I liked the voice of Guy but I never imagined Ryan was the man behind the cute Guy.

The Croods is fast-paced and vastly entertaining, and fit for kids but with a PG rating and all those young at heart. It will soon be out on BluRay and DVD via Amazon or you can buy it now via iTunes. There is also a game called The Croods as well available for iOS.

If you enjoyed The Croods as much as I did, Sean O'Connell from Cinema Blend (and other sources) say the sequel is already in the works over at Dreamworks. Woohoo! Can't wait for that one! But for now, I'm off to play The Croods on my iPod.