The Croods

 

Dreamworks, in their ongoing crusade to prove that they’re more than just an in-theatre mockbuster scheme, have really stepped up their game of late.  No longer content to make movies that look just enough like Pixar to remind us of how much better Pixar is, they’ve started churning out releases like the awesome How to Train your Dragon and the totally palatable Rise of the Guardians.  The Croods is the next step in their plan to make movies that people who know better can be excited about and it might be the first time that a Dreamworks movie being good wouldn’t be a complete surprise.  So with all this street cred they’ve assembled does The Croods further the impression that Dreamworks can now be trusted as a studio, or have they just gotten a little lucky while Pixar and Disney have gotten a little worse?

If The Croods were like How to Train your Dragon or Shrek, it would be easy to write it off as another fluke.  In both of those movies there’s a level of subtlety that is distinctly not a Dreamworks hallmark.  Even saying that Shrek is a subtle film should really demonstrate the point that Dreamworks aren’t really out to weave an intricate tale.  They want you to leave the theater thinking “Be yourself, don’t be afraid of change, family is important” in that order, because each character said them, exactly like that, at least 50 times.  That’s what we’re getting here.  There is no mistaking The Croods for anything other than a Dreamworks movie.   Any chance that you would is obliterated during the third act when one of the characters invents the hug.

If it were more like How to Train your Dragons, The Croods would have been a better movie, but the fact that it’s more like Madagascar is still a good sign for Dreamworks.  It shows that their overall level of quality is rising.  It’s a good movie.  It has entertaining moments and nothing about it should make you angry.  That’s already a vast improvement over what we’re used to from these guys.  If movies like How to Train your Dragon are showing that Dreamworks can occasionally make a great movie by straying from their formula, then hopefully movies like The Croods mean that even when they stick to their formula it’s at least watchable.

The motto of Dreamworks has always been “never show with actions what you can pay a washed up movie star 20 million dollars to scream with words, and never even do that if you can get the point across with just farting noises.” The reason that the The Croods is sign of improvement on their part is that even if they’re determined to club us over the head, at least they’re starting to get really good at it.  Sometimes watching someone delicately carve a statue out of marble is fun.  Sometimes, so is watching someone go to town on that statue with a jackhammer.

The movies of Dreamworks Studios are getting bigger, dumber, prettier and better.  And kind of smarter sometimes I guess.  If I had children I still wouldn’t be super excited about taking them to movies like this but I at least wouldn’t have to wrack my brain trying to think of excuses not to go.  Because first of all, they would be disciplined and obedient, like a Von Trapp child – if I say no they sing a song about how much they respect my decision and that’s the end of it.  But secondly because Dreamworks movies are just getting much more watchable.  The Croods isn’t the sort of movie that will teach them about life and death, like Up would, but it’s not fucking god damned stupid Madagascar either.  In some ways, maybe that’s even better – Up is some pretty real shit.  There’s a miscarriage during like the opening credits. I don’t want to have to explain that stuff to my 8 year old, it’s just…depressing.