The Croods
Director: Kirk De Micco, Chris Sanders
Writer: Kirk De Micco, Chris Sanders
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Cloris Leachman

Plot:
Eep (Emma Stone) lives in a cave with her family, fiercely protected by her father Grug (Nicolas Cage). Grug lives by the credo the everything new is bad and will get you killed. But Eep is not satisfied with that – she’s way too curious. And then she stumbles upon Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a young man who is prophesizing the end of the world. When their cave gets destroyed, Eep and her family join Guy on his way to a safe place.

The trailer for the Croods promised a coming-of-age story as Eep gains her independence from her father – which is a movie I would have loved to see. Unfortunately what we got was a movie that quickly sidelines Eep to focus on the guys, especially Grug.

I really wanted this movie to be what its trailer promised, though admittedly the scene with the shoes already gave me doubts that that would be what I was going to get. And then the movie quickly turns out to be about Eep either blindly following her father’s worldview or Guy’s worldview instead of developing her own perspective and life style.

Plus, the only character to get a little development and who is allowed to grow at all in this film is Grug. It’s all about him seeing the error of his ways, and to let his daughter go from his protection to be taken care of not by herself, but by another guy – Guy.

And as if that wasn’t sexist enough, Grug’s casual hatred of his mother-in-law (Cloris Leachman), apparently just because she was his mother-in-law and they are always to be hated, really annoyed the hell out of me.

There were some nice scenes, and I really liked the world design with all its colorful, weird animals. But the story just left a very bitter aftertaste that tainted the entire movie.

Summarising: meh.