The Croods (2013)

Similar: Ice Age
As of this post: On Netflix
This post is a little spoilerish.

~~~~
Rating: 3!
~~~~

I'll start off by saying that I was impressed. I really had no desire to see this and my dad turned it on over Christmas break when I slept in the living room so I had nowhere to go. And I loved it.

Dreamworks just keeps getting better with it's animation. I would like to see some variation considering Disney and Dreamworks pretty much have a set style now. For instance, the storyboard artwork vs the final animation for this movie was drastically different:


source

to this:


makes me a little sad. The storyboards always seem to look really original and they just mainstream it. Same went for How to Train Your Dragon. But at least the animation is still improving.

One of the most troubling things I find about animation is the "it's only for kids" mentality. Which makes me want to throw something out the window. The Croods calls attention to this a little bit in the same way that The Lego Movie did. Learning lessons, which seems to be a large part of animation, does not stop at a young age. Discovering yourself and pushing yourself to find new ideas and other points of view should not stop when you hit middle school. Embracing creativity and understanding that new ways to think aren't scary is something people lose. Believing in hope as recklessly as Superman does at the age of 24 should not get me weird looks and questions about my maturity. We can have movies like The Croods that focuses on creativity and learning to embrace change but at the same time a large amount of people see the movie as childish because it is animation. If it was so childish, then why did I cry when the main character's father began to change and understand when he was so adamant throughout the entire movie? If you are familiar with movie's like this then you know that he will open up. The character that has the most flaws change for the better and everyone understands each other for the better.

So why did I cry? Because it was moving? Yes. It was. But even more so, it scared me to know that people will miss a scene like this because they find it too childish. I almost missed it because of my thoughts toward the animation. Other people miss it because they are exactly like the father and they refuse to change. They refuse to let themselves learn lessons because they are the adults. Who decided that a person matures so much that they are seen as someone that has nothing left to learn and becomes lifted up as an 'adult'?




source

The Croods throws life lessons at you right and left, making them so completely obvious and it is fantastic. Movies have been coming out for ages with the life lessons in the background, as something that you just sort of understand, yet no one seems to be learning them. They must be out there if these filmmakers are using them. So it's immensely refreshing to see these animated movies teaching kids and adults not how to act, but how to learn and how to explore who you are.





source

The Croods is a movie for kids but I'll be damned if this one isn't shouting straight at the adults in this world that try to stop human kind from moving forward. Go check out The Croods. It's crazy good.