AC17: Random Movie Review - The Croods

So when Aardman were doing films with DreamWorks Animation, the original plan was for them to do films as part of a five film deal. But with the release of Flushed Away as well as their storage facility going up in flames, Aardman weren't too happy with the way things were going with DreamWorks Animation and parted ways due to creative differences. One of their planned films just so happened to be a prehistoric film, but once they left, DreamWorks Animation too over and created the film using their in house animation. But that didn't stop Aardman from still doing a film set in those times and with Early Man coming out next year, I thought to look at the film that ended up becoming more DreamWorks Animation than Aardman. Let's take a look:

So we meet the cave family called the Croods which consists of the strong and overprotective leader Grug (voiced by the over acting Nicolas Cage), the rebel teenager Eep (voiced by the second Gwen Stacy, Emma Stone), the less overprotective mum of the group Ugga (voiced by Catherine Keener), the rather dumb Thunk (voiced by the very smart Clark Duke) and the oldest one of them all, Gran (voiced by Cloris Leachman). Eep's curiosity often frustrates her dad. But she then meets an inventive modern human boy named Guy (voiced by the Merc with the Mouth himself, Ryan Reynolds) and his pet sloth Belt (voiced by the director of Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, Chris Sanders) who warns her of an impending apocalypse and that they and the family must move to remain safe. Of course the rest of the family aren't too keen on the idea, but when they home gets destroyed by an earthquake which makes them prey for carnivores, they go to find a new home with a bunch of the usual road trip nonsense along the way.

This is a very good film. It retains the animation that made How to Train Your Dragon and its sequel such great hits and it bears some resemblance to the Flintstones minus the modern day stone age thing they had going. Some of the animals are pretty inventive and its a generally well animated film with plenty of colour and great for 3D showings. An overall great family film I'd say. 9/10