95 min | PG | November 25, 2020 | Universal Pictures
The Croods, a family of prehistoric cave dwellers, stumble into a walled paradise run by an evolved, smug couple who think they’re better. Two clans collide over property lines and parenting. It is loud, it is bright, and it is exactly what you expect.
The Croods are a family of cave people surviving by force in a hostile prehistoric world. They wander into a walled compound built by the Bettermans, a refined couple who have invented privacy, beds, and condescension. The two families clash because one lives in a pile and the other lives in a treehouse with running water. Joel Crawford builds the film around that culture gap and the romance between Eep and Guy that threatens to split both clans. Underneath the noise it is a story about two fathers who cannot let their children grow up.
Nicolas Cage voices Grug as a wall of insecurity. He plays the patriarch as a man terrified that his daughter will leave, and Cage lets the panic leak into every line. Emma Stone gives Eep restless energy and a clear hunger to choose her own life. Ryan Reynolds plays Guy as the smooth outsider who finally has a place to belong. Peter Dinklage and Leslie Mann play the Bettermans as passive-aggressive gatekeepers who weaponize good manners. Cloris Leachman gets the sharpest moments as Gran, a feral grandmother with more cunning than the entire cast combined.
Crawford directs his first feature with relentless forward motion. The script by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Paul Fisher, and Bob Logan never lets a scene breathe before the next gag arrives. The production design carries the real ideas. The Betterman compound is all manicured curves and engineered comfort, and it sits against the Croods in their raw, jagged skins like a furniture catalog dropped into a tar pit. The animators invent absurd hybrid creatures, the punch monkeys and the wolf spiders, and the world has more imagination than the plot built on top of it.
This is competent animated product assembled to keep children laughing for an afternoon. The jokes land at a steady clip and the colors never stop moving. The first film found something real in a father learning to let go of fear. This sequel doubles the families and halves the feeling, then covers the gap with slapstick and volume.