Anthomation Assesses The Croods: A New Age

Howdy guys, Anthomaton here. Today, I shall review the latest film to come out in 2020: The Croods: A New Age.

A New Age is the most recent film from the DreamWorks Animation cannon and their fourth film made since they were bought out by NBCUniversal. Seriously, the fact that DreamWorks and Illumination are now owned by the same parent company is really scary to think about. But I digress. The film was released into theaters this past Thanksgiving, with limited capacity of course, and can still be viewed on the big screen. As of right now, the film has grossed $35.4 million on a $65 million, though it is unlikely that it ends up a box office bomb.

Searching for a safer habitat, the prehistoric Crood family discovers an idyllic, walled-in paradise that meets all of its needs. Unfortunately, they must also learn to live with the Bettermans — a family that’s a couple of steps above the Croods on the evolutionary ladder. As tensions between the new neighbors start to rise, a new threat soon propels both clans on an epic adventure that forces them to embrace their differences, draw strength from one another, and survive together.

The story tries to shoehorn in way too many cliches and doesn’t have enough substance of its own to fully justify its existence. The movie goes on repeat mode with its storyline of an overbearing father and his teenage daughter. Then, it adds a lot of romantic jealousy between each of the two families. That will be explained later in the character section. Also, there is this tribe of punch monkeys who end up capturing our male leads and they only communicate by punching people. I admit that the idea is creative. Congratulations movie: you get one point for creativity. The best scene is a dinner scene, where it is like that scene from Shrek 2 (2004) but instead with the Croods and Bettermans. Like the rest of the movie, its loud and there is a lot of arguing and bickering. It’s the only time in the movie where being loud actually works to the movie’s advantage. For the rest of the movie, there is too obnoxious yelling, stale jokes that didn’t even work in the first Croods film, lots of modern slang, and a tone that is too cartoonish for a sequel to a film that took itself somewhat seriously. The climax of the film features the female leads rescuing the male leads from their captivity in the punching-monkey layer. Now, I am all for this, but can you execute in a fun and thoughtful manner. The short answer is no. The long answer is they make the Grandma from the first Croods the most important character by having her introduce the Thundersisters, and they use that to transform themselves into cave-super heroines. Right the heck out of nowhere, this film wanted to like some TV show. I’m not joking, this film decided to pay homage to 90’s style TV opening themes as the Thundersisters made their dramatic entrance. There is that moment in bad films where people can see where everything goes completely off the rails, and this was that moment. 

The animation is overall good, but it’s nothing groundbreaking. While it has a variety of colors to emulate the specific tones of each of the scenes, the colors also emulate something out of Trolls: World Tour (2020). When the film has to copy the displaying of colors of another film from the same studio that came out in the same year, the creative aspect of the animation can get lost in the dust. I guest DreamWorks is tired of ripping off Pixar films, so they are resorting to ripping off their off films. Aside from that, I don’t have much of a problem with the visuals. The character movements are nice, the action scenes are still well done even if they are not as sweeping as the predecessor, and the facial expressions did a couple of chuckles out of me.

The characters are not as enjoyable as before as they came off as being one of three things: annoying, loud, or careless. There is Grug Crood (voiced by Nic Cage), a caveman and the patriarch of the Croods. There’s Crood (voiced by Emma Stone), a cavegirl, Grug’s oldest daughter and she is Guy’s girlfriend. There’s Guy (voiced by Ryan Reynolds), an intelligent caveboy who lives with the Croods and is Eep’s boyfriend. To round off the rest of the Croods with Ugga, Thunk, and Gran, who are the mother, son, and grandma respectively. And then we are introduced to the Bettermans. There is Phil Betterman (voiced by Peter Dinklage), the patriarch of the Bettermans who had a history with Guy’s parents. There’s Hope Betterman (voiced by Leslie Mann), the matriarch of the Bettermans and Phil’s wife. There’s Dawn Betterman, Phil and Hope’s daughter and only child who befriends Eep and is Guy’s old friend. As stated before, there is a lot of arguing and yelling going on in this picture. Grug doesn’t like Pete, Ugga doesn’t like Hope, Guy and Eep have a romantic meltdown, and Hope practically admits her hate for all of the Croods in the second act. A closet can only fit in so much junk, and there is way too much junk in this closet.

The Croods: A New Age lacks the substance of its predecessor. The story has too many subplots with an inconsistent tone, the characters are not very enjoyable, and the animation is nothing special. If you are a fan of The Croods (2013), it’s still ok enough to warrant a look. Everyone else won’t find a ton of enjoyment in this flick.

Score:

5/10