Movie Review: The Croods

This movie is available for streaming through Netflix.

This could have been a cute movie, but it wasn’t. Frankly, it was just too bizarre and often for no good reason. The whole thing was a bit of a farce, but not particularly funny. I also found the moral of the story to be heavy-handed to the point that it became trite.

The premise is that a family of cavemen stay in their cave all the time because it’s safer that way. Grug, the father of this caveman family, has determined that they should stay in their cave almost all the time so they don’t die. But when their cave is destroyed by an earthquake, they are forced out into the world and forced to accept new ideas.

This movie was not without its redeeming moments. It did get a handful of chuckles out of me (though not nearly as many as I suspect it was going for). Some of it was beautifully rendered.

But ultimately it was just bizarre. There was no need for them to make up dangerous creatures that would hurt the cavemen, but for some reason they decided to draw in strange beasts that never existed like mice-elephants. I found it… unnecessary and distracting. I was also never sure why Guy knew that an earthquake or volcano was coming and towards the end, I couldn’t figure out why one side of a crevice represented safety while the other represented death.

I’d say that I should have turned my brain off, but it’s not like I went into this movie expecting much.

To cap it all off, my kids didn’t even like this movie (5 and 8). Since they’re right in the target age range, their opinion is probably more relevant than mine, so here is what my 8-year-old son had to say:

“Because it was crazy and didn’t make any sense.”

Well, there you have it. I think his answer is better than mine. 🙂

This movie wasn’t awful, it was just bad. I don’t recommend it.

Posted in Movie and TV Reviews.