Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Croods: A New Age’ on Hulu, a Nicolas Cage Caveman Cartoon Culture Clash Comedy of Little Consequence

Now on Hulu, The Croods: A New Age was released in late 2020 to remind us that 2013’s The Croods exists. That’s my theory, at least, since there was a moment eight years ago that I saw the first cartoon, and all I recall about it is Nicolas Cage voicing a caveman. Well, he’s back, voicing that same caveman, and Emma Stone, Catherine Keener, Cloris Leachman and Ryan Reynolds are also returning to their voice roles, along with newcomers Peter Dinklage and Leslie Mann, he said, typing a list of names because the Croodsiverse inspires not much else in the way of compelling thoughts. Maybe that’s a bad omen for the rest of this review and this is where I beg you to keep reading? Crap. Maybe I’ll get myself out of this corner I’ve painted myself into. The attempt might be more interesting than the movie!

THE CROODS: A NEW AGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: There was a character in the first Croods named Guy (Reynolds), who we see in the new movie as a boy. His parents died in a tar pit, which must be a rough way to go. Many moons passed and when he was a teen, he ended up with the Crood family, which was a strange fit because they’re Neanderthals and he’s a different species of hominid, more straight of spine and light of brow. The Croods consist of papa Grug (Cage), mama Ugga (Keener), teen daughter Eep (Stone), grandmother Gran (Leachman), boy Thunk (Clark Duke) and baby Sandy (Kailey Crawford). They’re a tight family in the sense that they sleep in a giant smelly pile, even with their giant green cat pet, and Guy and his cutesy sloth sidekick are squished right in there with ’em. In the first movie, the Croods huddled in a cave, afraid of the outside world, but Guy convinced them to become nomads in search of a fabled place he calls Tomorrow, and that’s where we find them now.

Life on the road is hard. They’re constantly attacked by flying baboon koalas and crap, and sometimes all they have to eat is sticks. This doesn’t bother Eep and Guy, who are all kissyface with each other, which makes Grug worried that they’ll leave the pack to start their own. Well one day the group comes across a gorgeous slab of jungle just crammed with a visual rainbow cacophony feast of tropical fruits and crystalline waters. They eat like mindless feral hogs, except even more disgusting. As it turns out, they’re on the property of the Betterman family, Phil (Dinklage) and Hope (Mann) and their daughter Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran), and wouldn’t you know it, they’re old friends of Guy’s family. They’re slim and sophisticated, manbunned and hygiened, living in a giant tree with mirrors and wicker-basket walls and separate rooms for everyone. They wear flip-flops and drink “bitter bean juice” in the morning and do the deed in toilets. TOILETS. Suffice to say, they do not sleep in a big gross pile, because such a thing would look terrible on Instagram.

Phil and Hope are also snooty betterthanyousers who angle to disconnect Guy and Eep and connect Guy with Dawn, so I think that means they’re racist? Before you know it, Guy has a manbun and Phil is manipulating Grug because he knows Grug ain’t keen on giving his daughter’s hand to Guy. Episodic hijinks follow: Eep and Dawn pal around, there’s a big to-do over bananas and some blue-and-pink monkeys that punch each other to communicate, stuff like that. About 2,000 gags later, it all ends somewhat violently. Hooray?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Two parts The Flintstones, one part Shrek, one part Trolls (the bulldozer-you-with-color part) and dashes of the Ice Age movies and The Good Dinosaur.

Performance Worth Watching: Is it OK for me to say that Emma Stone rocks in her voice role, or will it make you want to put me in front of a “punch monkey” who’s about to read War and Peace to me?

Memorable Dialogue: “He gives me a funny feeling like I have butterflies in my stomach. Not just the ones I had for lunch, but the other butterflies.” — Eep

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The old collectivism vs. individualism dynamic again? I’m watching a cartoon here, not going to f—ing COLLEGE. It’s clear that the Bettermans are sophisticated neo-hipsters and the Croods are primitive traditionalists, and the culture clash that occurs is explored, as in all timeless literature, with 95 minutes of middle-schooler jokes fired at us at sub-light speed. It’s funny how great Croods 2 looks with its no-expense-spared megatextured and precision-rendered chromatism, but none of it really sticks because it tends to blur by lickety-split, and all of the foundational writing — plot, characters, subtext — is as bland as a no-salt saltine.

The more-jokes-than-you-can-handle approach is a classic case of quantity over quality. Crazy grandma, check. Cute animals, check. Weird animals, check. Crazy animals, check. Body hair jokes, check. Vague message about the importance of family, check. Light satire of modern cultural stereotypes, check. Perfunctory mooshy speechy heartfelt sentiments, check. Commentary circa 1981 on the addictive qualities of television, check. This movie has it all, he said, not giving a single damn about anything that happens in it. It’s silly fun for a bit, but soon grows wearying for adults, while younger folks will be entertained but never truly engaged. I shrug in its general direction.

Our Call: SKIP IT. The Croods: A New Age is almost perfectly OK. Almost.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch The Croods: A New Age on Hulu