The Croods

The Croods

 

Rated PG for some scary action

Starring Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener and Cloris Leachman

98 minutes

We joined the masses one Tuesday afternoon during Spring Break for a discount movie. Oy, do those masses (read: kids) leave a messy theater. We wanted to see Oz: The Great and Powerful, but our friends suggested this movie instead. What an entertaining choice The Croods turned out to be!

It had been a long time since DD and I frequented a theater. Since we moved out to the country, movieplexes are not plentiful like they were in the city. I was happy to discover that a nearby theater (still a 45 min drive) has $5 Tuesdays. My wallet and I did a happy dance over this joyous news.  (Thanks, Gina for this golden nugget of information!) I urge you to check your local theaters to see if they have discounted movie times. I know that AMC has $6 tickets on movies before noon every day. I mean, who wants to pay $12 to see a movie? I certainly don’t.

First, a quick word about upcoming shows. Summertime is just around the corner and the previews gave a taste of some fine future entertainment. MU or Monsters University will be high on the must-see list, followed by Smurfs 2. I’m on the fence about Despicable Me 2 since I didn’t really care for the first one, (I’m a Megamind fan) but the preview looked funny so, who knows? And, there seemed to be a forest-creatures trend in Hollywood as Turbo, (a snail infused with nitros oxide races at the Indy 500), and Epic (a good-vs-evil-save-the-world adventure featuring a caterpillar, a snail, a slug, a toad and a few “humans” too) with a stellar cast: Beyonce, Colin Farrell, Christoph Waltz, Josh Hutcherson and Amanda Seyfried. DD and I both agreed that when Epic is released, we will be running, not walking, to the theater.

Now, I wouldn’t call The Croods a great flick but it’s the next best thing. It got some big laughs from the audience, myself included, and with the annoyingly endearing caveman family and the incredibly imaginative prehistoric creatures, what’s not to love?

Just a reminder since Flixy Mom has been quiet for a while: I don’t like to post the whole plot of the movie (that’s for you to discover), just a quick introduction of characters with the basic premise.

The Croods sleep like a pack of animals, sharpen their teeth before bed, and rarely go outside of their comfort zone of the cave. Grug (Nicolas Cage) keeps a firm hand to force the family inside the darkness and away from danger. Eep (Emma Stone), the eldest daughter, runs like a jungle cat and is as strong as a dinosaur. She just wants to get out into the light, and she and Grug butt heads as any over-bearing father and rebellious teenager would. She meets Guy (Ryan Reynolds) who introduces her to fire and entices her with life on the outside. But, Guy brings a dire warning, the world is changing, like near-apocalyptic, continents-shifting type of changing. So, when the family’s cave is destroyed, they embark on a journey with the help of Guy and follow the sun to tomorrow. Those might seem like flowery, generic words, but I’ll just say that “the sun” and “tomorrow” have more meaning than you think and they do not denote the end of the movie.

The funniest part of this movie is the family and their dumb-as-a-caveman, crude and barbaric ways, and they are, of course, the brunt of most of the jokes. Eep is my favorite character, and I got the impression that she just wants to club Guy over the head and drag him by his hair to the nearest, well, you know.

As we were leaving the theater, DD said “she liked it” and “it was funny.” She did mention the scary parts (a few prehistoric animals tried to eat the Croods once or twice), but I didn’t think it was as scary as say, Brave, when Mama Bear goes after her cubs.

So, if your Spring Breakers are bored playing video games and you need to get them out of the house, I whole-heartedly recommend The Croods. Enjoy!