I don’t know if there was anybody out there who was demanding a sequel to The Croods from Dreamworks animation studios, but it seemed inevitable in a lot of cases seeing that it got a decent reception from the public and not to mention the many spin-offs series’s that would follow shortly after. As for me. I think the first Croods is a decent movie, it's far from DreamWorks's best, but thanks to director Chris Sanders’s usual charming tone and its colorful and vibrant creative animation, this movie managed to get by well enough even if it is mostly a cliched story that has been done better in the more superior animated fair. Now with Sanders being reduced to only having a writing credit for this new movie called The Croods A New Age, can Dreamworks pull off a solid follow-up that can be in the same ranks as Kung Fu Panda 2 or How to Train Your Dragon 2?
After the events of the first movie, The Croods including Eep (Emma Stone) Grug (Nicolas Cage), and their newest addition Guy (Ryan Reynolds) have stumbled across a mysterious land that is rich with fruit and colorful creatures. It’s there where they meet the Betermans Phil (Peter Dinklage) Hope (Leslie Mann) and their daughter Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran). The Croods are impressed with their ability to survive but conflicts begin to arise when they move in with The Bettermans premises. However, when new threats arise, the Croods and the Bettermans must put aside their differences to save the day.
The first movie’s story was cliched and tiresome but at least the charming characters and solid direction from Chris Sanders made it all worth it to experience a decent film. Now, unfortunately, the writing in this film is worse than before as the jokes mostly do not hit and the subplots are arguably even more cliched than before. I should point out that there are so many subplots going on at the same time but none of them really come together to form a good experience. One subplot is about Grug not wanting Eep to run off and marry Guy which is similar to Dracula’s plot thread in Hotel Transylvannia, but then the movie throws in a bunch of others like the betterment trying to get Guy to fall in love with their daughter dawn followed by another one where Thunk can’t part with a social media subtext which gets old very fast. I give the first film credit that at least they kept the conflicts to a minimum of three or less but this sequel is so convinced that if you throw a bunch of subplots at such a fast pace that it suddenly equals entertainment, but it takes a truly talented team of writers and directors to make that actually work to it’s fullest potational. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes there is a charming moment here and there specifically when Eep forms a friendship bond with Dawn, but this is a movie that tries too many things at once without making any one of those things flow smoothly.
The characters range from being okay to mediocre at best but they, unfortunately, couldn’t carry this lousy story like they did the last time. Celebrities like Emma Stone Nicholas Cage and Ryan Reynolds return as Guy and The Croods family respectively and while they aren’t technically awful, they don’t have the same amount of likability and charm as they did before. While it is neat to see Eep and Guy form more of a bond, it sadly leads to the typical cliches you would expect to see like their relationship having problems or the third act breakup which is made worse knowing the characters around them caused these things to happen. The new characters the Betterman are not much of a help either as their characters are very unbearable and their attempts at making humor and interesting personalities are few and far in between. I was hoping the characters would make this fast-paced and overbearing story less painful to sit through but these characters just sadly go through the motions without anything unique that made them decent enough the first time through.
The animation in the last movie was quite a spectacle, so I was hoping this film would be the same, and in a lot of ways it was, and in some ways, it kinda lost a little bit of the wow factor. The creature and environment designs are still just as colorful and unique as they were before. The character designs look good for the most part and they are animated with bouncy persistence. One thing that could be different is if they separated the character designs and environment designs a little more because sometimes it feels like they blend in together a little too well. There are also times when the animation is edited in a way that is berserk and in some ways breaks the rules of squash and stretch that were established in the first movie. That is to say, if the filmmakers wanted to make a cartoony stylized movie that is fine, but when your first movie has a specific style that it stuck with the first time around, I would expect any future installments to follow suit. The movie's colorful animation is a treat but it's a shame it didn’t capture my imagination as much as the first movie did.
Composer Mark Mothersbaugh is well known for providing the music for cartoons like Regular Show and Rugrats as well as animated features such as The Lego Movie Hotel Transylvania and even The Mitchel vs the Machines which premiered a year after this movie. Even though Mothersbaugh is a talented composer, the music sadly is standard and boring with the addition of random pop songs that in no way add to the entertainment value of this movie. I want to praise this composer because he has composed music for many different projects, but I just can’t really bring myself to say anything about how good this soundtrack is when it could have been better.
Making a sequel to The Croods 3/4ths of a decade later seems like an odd choice. What transpires before the viewing audience though is just another standard animated venture without that much charm or likability. I’m not gonna act like I expected so much out of this movie, but seeing as a genuinely found The Croods to be a decent experience, I was hoping the filmmakers could do the same thing with this sequel. This is far from the worst thing Dreamworks has ever made, but sadly this movie suffers without Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco in the director's chairs. Kids will probably enjoy this movie more than the adults in the crowd, but there is no shortage of better family movies to put on that are charming and actually good.
(Final Grade: C)