Yes,
The Croods was nominated for Oscars and Golden Globes, but I have the feeling it slipped out of sight a bit too quickly. I watched it with other adults, and needed no kid-approval to encourage us to laugh out loud. Fast, funny, smart, great-looking, wonderfully voice-acted—
The Croods fits comfortably between the solid child-oriented Pixars and winking
Shrek after-comers. And it's no surprise that Nicholas Cage is an amazing voice actor—let alone Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keenr, the great Cloris Leachman—and what a treat:
Clark Duke, who fared so well in the last season of
The Office—to my taste, in no small part because he looks so much like a
young Roger Ebert.
The best thing about
The Croods is its dedication to the pace of Tex Avery's work for MGM. Like
The Incredibles, it trusts our eyes to keep up, and rewards us—both visually and in its many throwaway verbal gags—for doing so. It's a movie I've seen only once, but as soon as it was over I knew I wanted to see it again. "Good boy, Douglas!"
