ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY?‘The Croods’ is an aminated film about a clan of cave-dwellers.
The joy of discovery
Daniel Carey
THERE’S a scene in the 2010 film ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ in which Gobber, the village blacksmith, advises the children in his dragon-killing class to study The Dragon Manual, a book containing everything his Viking tribe knows about every identified fire-breather. His pupils look horrified.
“Wait, you mean, READ?” asks one incredulously. “While we’re still alive?” another says, seeking clarification. “Why read words when you can just kill the stuff the words tell you stuff about?” wonders a third.
I was reminded of that scene while watching ‘The Croods’, a new animated film in which the patriarch of the eponymous family insists: “Cavemen don’t need brains – ideas are for weaklings!”
The similarity is, perhaps, no coincidence – ‘The Croods’ is directed by Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders, and Sanders was one-half of the team behind ‘How To Train Your Dragon’. While it’s not quite in the same class as his last outing, ‘The Croods’ is still very fine family entertainment.
As you may have guessed from the accompanying picture, the Croods are a group of cave-dwellers, the last surviving humans in their area. Living in a hostile world, they’ve learned through experience (and the violent deaths of all their neighbours) only to venture out when they need food. Grug (voiced by Nicolas Cage), the head of the family, lives by the motto ‘never not be afraid’. But his daughter Eep (Emma Stone) is deeply frustrated by an existence inspired more by ‘not dying’ than living.
Sneaking out one night, she meets Guy (Ryan Reynolds). He’s intelligent, knows how to make fire, fears impending disaster, and says they should seek high ground. After the Croods are forced to find alternative accommodation, the clan set off on an adventure in unfamiliar territory.
Having spent so much time in the cave, the world is a source of wonder (and fear) to the Croods, and their reaction to new things often amuses. Fire ‘likes’ and then ‘bites’ Eep’s brother Thunk (Clark Duke). Gran (Cloris Leachman) is intrigued by Guy’s pet, a sloth-like creature called Belt. Told that pets are animals you don’t eat, she replies: “We call those children!”
There’s slapstick humour and physicality for the kids in the audience. The family’s first hunting expedition is a great set-piece – a battle between humans and beasties where fortunes change frequently. The creatures the Croods encounter are imaginative – recognisable, yet different from their modern cousins. The landscape, too, is very colourful.
For the adults, there’s a moving moment of separation near the end and insight into the nature of modernity. Unsurprisingly, there are some echoes of ‘The Flintstones’ (snapshots and shades make an appearance), but they remain wild at heart. The Croods’ searches for food are led by Sandy, a baby who appears more Tasmanian Devil than human infant.
When Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) successfully created fire in the 2000 desert-island flick ‘Castaway’, he self-consciously went into caveman-mode, even beating his chest. Guy is a more refined type, however.
The scene is a set for a clash of civilisations, between Guy’s endless innovations (leftovers, shoes, stilts, umbrellas) and stubborn Grug’s safety-first strategy and morality tales. Eep’s mother Ugga (Catherine Keener) finds herself increasingly siding with the interloper against her husband. The brewing romance between Guy and Eep is nicely blended into the wider disagreement about what to do and how to do it.
Perhaps fittingly, the viewing I attended was preceded by an advertisement for the Safe Cross Code. After all, a few thousand years on, the world is still a dangerous place. Well worth seeing.
Rating 7 out of 10
