Theater Review: The Croods

This was honestly a bit of a surprise. I had absolutely no interest in checking out this film, but my parents visited and decided to take my son (and us) to the movie.

The Croods is about a a family of cavemen led by their father Grug (Nicolas Cage). The cavemen have slowly started to become extinct, thanks to disease, carnivorous beasts, and others.

Grug is very overprotective of his family, which they believe is the reason they have survived while others have died. Eep (Emma Stone), Grug's daughter, is not so excited about having to stay in hiding inside their cave all of the time. So, she begins to push the limits.

Ugga (Catherine Keener) - Grug's wife, Gran (Cloris Leachman) - Ugga's mother, Thunk (Clark Duke) - Grug's son, and Sanday - Grug's other daughter, all follow everything that Grug's says. They love their cave and have no plans to ever go out and explore the world.

Eep, however, sees a glow outside the cave during the night and curiosity gets the best of her. She sneaks out of the cave and follows it - which actually turns out to be fire, something she has never seen before. The creator of the fire, though, is Guy (Ryan Reynolds), another caveman who has been out on his own and has adapted to the harsh world.

After an earthquake crushes their cave and opens up a hidden world to the cavemen, the Croods are forced to try and find a new place to hide - and use Guy as their guide. Along the way, the rest of the family begins to feel that Grug's way of life may not be the best.

I have to admit, even after seeing the trailer a handful of times this movie never really excited me. But, I guess you can't judge a movie by its trailer - because the film as actually pretty decent. Not amazing, but definitely worth seeing.

The scenery in the film was outstanding, with at first mostly brown and boring colors - but blossoming into a rainbow world.

The family itself was also pretty fun. But the funniest character had to be Guy's pet sloth, Belt - who had some great scenes, despite not uttering any real words.

Grade:

36/50: Young Frankenstein

Like a lot of the older films on my list, I really feared watching this movie because I had really high hopes for it and had heard great things. That is why I sort of held off in watching it - that and I really enjoy Gene Wilder.

Anyway, Wilder plays Dr. Frankenstein, one of the descendents of the other Dr. Frankenstein, in Young Frankenstein. He tries to distance himself from that family even going so far as pronouncing his name differently.

But, he ends up being lured back to Transylvania and continues his grandfather's experiments after inheriting the castle. He finds a backroom where his grandfather was doing his reanimation projects and becomes infatuated with it - then begins to try and perfect his grandfather's experiment.

Teamed with his partner, Inga (Teri Garr) and his servant, Igor (Marty Feldman), Dr. Frankenstein steals a body and creates The Monster (Peter Boyle).

I have to admit, a lot scared me about this film. It is old; it is filmed in black and white; and Mel Brooks is sort of hit or miss with me. But, this one was a hit.

It definitely had a lot of the Brooks' humor - for instance the horse whinnying every time Frau Blucher's (Cloris Leachman) name is said, that had me laughing each and ever time. I really found myself laughing a lot.

Wilder was in true form, I can honestly say I can't think of another actor that could have played this part. He was so over the top and his voice gets so loud and crazy when he gets excited. Just amazing.

Peter Boyle was great as The Monster. He didn't have many lines, but almost stole the show. The song and dance number (which I had actually seen before) was outstanding. I was also not familiar with Marty Feldman, but he was awesome as Igor - his facial expressions were so funny.

Grade: