The Croods Has Its Moments, but Lacks in Some Areas

Lately, DreamWorks has not been on the top of its game. Rise of the Guardians was a good film, but was nothing special or memorable. As for Turbo, I can’t quite judge yet. This brings us to the film in between these two films, The Croods.

The Croods is about a family of cavemen who needs to search for a new cave after their cave gets destroyed. They meet a guy named Guy and he helps them find a new cave and teaches Grug, their overprotective father, that there’s more to life than playing it safe.

The Croods is an ok film, but is plagued with problems. One aspect of the film which bothered me was the editing. I did not agree with some of the transitions and how it went from one shot to the next. Some of the transitions were far too quick and choppy. I simply did not care for the film’s editing style. This also leads to the pacing issues in the film. The film would repeatedly go from fast to slow. This left me quite bored at some points in the film.

Also, the story is very messy and gets lost within some of the scenes in the film and loses the point of the film. The screenplay also really wasn’t that good. The humor is also hit or miss. Some of the jokes made me laugh pretty hard, but some of the other jokes made me cringe. At some points, where there were points in the film that made me laugh hard, they were followed by some downright stupid jokes, which wiped the smile right off my face. The voice acting also could have been better.

There are also some logical errors in the film. For example, when an animal was playing a decomposed ribcage as an instrument, he would hit the same note, but a different sound would come out. That scene was also out of sync at some points, which was weird. Also, their teeth are so white, which is surprising considering that they’re cavemen who probably don’t brush their teeth to keep them as white as they are.

Even though this film has a lot of problems, the animation is beautiful. The backgrounds and settings are very colorful and not dull like the usual caveman film. The character designs are also really well done.

I also feel that the film really captured the aspect of finding out about new things. The scenes involving the Croods finding out about these things lead to some really funny humor.

 

Overall, The Croods is nothing overly remarkable, but has some good aspects to it. While it is definitely not a must see, it is something you might want to consider renting.

 

Film Grade: C