--- title: 'The Croods': A Post-Modern Stone Age Family description: If your family was the only one around, and giant beasts galloped or swooped down to prey on you, you might be as conservative as... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7119484/the-croods-a-post-modern-stone-age-family/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-03-22T09:45:15.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T05:46:13.042Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: 'The Croods': A Post-Modern Stone Age Family og:description: If your family was the only one around, and giant beasts galloped or swooped down to prey on you, you might be as conservative as... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7119484/the-croods-a-post-modern-stone-age-family/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaa05984a1443ee32/698a8f04457a524d3ed6ffb1/the-croods-sq2925_s98_f198_cc_rgb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: THE CROODS og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'The Croods': A Post-Modern Stone Age Family twitter:description: If your family was the only one around, and giant beasts galloped or swooped down to prey on you, you might be as conservative as... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaa05984a1443ee32/698a8f04457a524d3ed6ffb1/the-croods-sq2925_s98_f198_cc_rgb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # 'The Croods': A Post-Modern Stone Age Family > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Mar 22, 2013 9:45 AM UTC  The Croods (and friends) wave to the family patriarch, as the near the end of their journey. From left: Belt (Chris Sanders), Guy (Ryan Reynolds), Eep (Emma Stone), Ugga (Catherine Keener), Sandy, Thunk (Clark Duke) and Gran (Cloris Leachman). The Croods (and friends) wave to the family patriarch, as the near the end of their journey. From left: Belt (Chris Sanders), Guy (Ryan Reynolds), Eep (Emma Stone), Ugga (Catherine Keener), Sandy, Thunk (Clark Duke) and Gran (Cloris Leachman). DreamWorks Animation—The Croods © 2013 DreamWorks Animation LLC. All Rights Reserved by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Mar 22, 2013 9:45 AM UTC If your family was the only one around, and giant beasts galloped or swooped down to prey on you, you might be as conservative as Grud Crood (voiced by Nicolas Cage). When the known world is a mortal threat, your cave is your fallout shelter. A Neanderthal in Cartoonland, Grud has honed his survival skills sufficiently to lead the Crood brood on a giant-egg hunt that plays like an [NFL](http://topics.time.com/nfl/) scrimmage. And like a [football](http://topics.time.com/football/) coach with a master sergeant’s mentality, he barks out orders— “Stay inside the family kill circle!” — to his wife and kids. His useful wariness, though, has festered into an almost religious apprehension. “Fear keeps us alive,” he warns in a sage voice. “Never _not_ be afraid.” _The Croods_, DreamWorks’ lively if nothing-new 3-D animated feature from directors Chris Sanders (_Lilo & Stitch_, _How to Train Your Dragon_) and Kirk De Micco, taps the familiar dynamic of cartoon families — the Flintstones, the Incredibles and the Simpsons — to tell a story of generational discord and eventual, inevitable reunion. Grud’s hot-bodied daughter Eep (Emma Stone), disobeying his stay-at-home rules to go climbing above their rock fortress, meets a cool guy named Guy (Ryan Reynolds), who just happens to have invented fire. The father is cautious, the teen girl adventurous, her new beau clever in a way that threatens Dad. Guess which one needs to be taught a lesson. For Grud, as with Homer Simpson, father knows least. **(READ: Corliss’s** [**review of** **_How to Train Your Dragon_**](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1975321,00.html)**)** To extend the _Simpsons_ analogy, Eep is an older, tomboyish Lisa; son Thunk (Clark Duke) is a doltish, unathletic Bart; mother Ugga (Catherine Keener) is a less fretful, less essential Marge; baby Sandy is a feral Maggie (and, like the youngest Simpson, communicates without words); and elderly Gran (Cloris Leachman) is crotchety, borderline-senile Abe with a sex change. That makes Guy one of those smart boys who has a one-episode fling with Lisa. **(READ: James Poniewozik’s** [**take on** **_The Simpsons Movie_**](http://entertainment.time.com/2007/07/27/the%5Fsimpsons%5Fmovie%5Fbetter%5Fthan%5F1/)**)** This orphan dream-boy is the Thomas Edison of pre-history. Besides fire, he’s also invented shoes, a rough form of instant photography and the domestication of wildlife: a monkey named Belt that holds up Guy’s pants. “Pets,” he explains to the Croods. “An animal you don’t eat.” A renegade from a slightly future world, Guy is as far ahead of the Croods as they are of Gran, who sports a reptilian tail. (At least Grud is all-mammal.) Evolution is in fast-forward here, and so are the earthquakes, volcano eruptions and other geological disasters facing the Croods. Where Grud believed survival meant staying put, Guy thinks homesteading spells disaster. Sensing a coming continental shift, Guy tells them, “Our world is ending, Tomorrow is a place where things are better.” He’s also the first climate-change alarmist. **(READ: Corliss’s** [**review of** **_Lilo & Stitch_**](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1002724,00.html)**)** Originally announced in 2005, when DreamWorks was to produce the movie with the stop-motion geniuses at Aardman Films and John Cleese was hired to write the script, _The Croods_ creates two different landscapes: the stark, monochromatic Caveworld where the family lives, barely, and the wildly luscious, DayGlo Tomorrow area to which they must flee. The palette brought to life by Sanders, De Micco and their design team is rich indeed, in the perhaps overfamiliar _Avatar_ style, and bursting with imaginative fauna from the same bestiary as Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things and Chuck Jones’s Roadrunner critters. **(READ: Corliss’s** [**tribute to Chuck Jones**](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,212624,00.html)**)** As Pixar movies have elaborated on the pictorial richness and serious undertone of old Disney classics, DreamWorks has updated the knockabout vaudeville shtick and brisk, impudent attitude that Jones and other Warner Bros. cartoon directors reveled in. When DreamWorks directors rev into full-farce mode, they can manufacture divine lunacy, as in last year’s _Madagascar 3:_ [_Europe_](http://topics.time.com/europe/)_‘s Most Wanted._ **(READ: TIME’s** [**review of** **_Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted_**](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/06/06/madagascar-3-europes-most-wanted-cirque-de-berserk/)**)** _The Croods_ shares _Madagascar’_s saucy visual sense and its exemplary voice cast; Stone’s delivery matches Eep’s verve, and Cage infuses his trademark vocal mopiness with stalwart undertones that indicate the caveman could become a hero. But the family-dramedy genre that the film inhabits demands a bit more narrative ingenuity than is on display. Until a late heart transplant, when Grud seizes the plot from the Eep-Guy romance to show that brute strength has its advantages, _The Croods_ settles for forcing Grud and Guy into an intergenerational, opposites-attract road movie. It’s _Identity Thief_ with flying piranhas, or _Plains, Trains & Automobiles_ on foot. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119484/the-croods-a-post-modern-stone-age-family/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119484/the-croods-a-post-modern-stone-age-family/"},"headline":"'The Croods': A Post-Modern Stone Age Family","datePublished":"2013-03-22T09:45:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T05:46:13.042Z","description":"If your family was the only one around, and giant beasts galloped or swooped down to prey on you, you might be as conservative as...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7119484/the-croods-a-post-modern-stone-age-family/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaa05984a1443ee32/698a8f04457a524d3ed6ffb1/the-croods-sq2925_s98_f198_cc_rgb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaa05984a1443ee32/698a8f04457a524d3ed6ffb1/the-croods-sq2925_s98_f198_cc_rgb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"THE CROODS","caption":"THE CROODS","creditText":"DreamWorks Animation—The Croods © 2013 DreamWorks Animation LLC. 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