The Croods

I have been wanting to watch this one since I first saw a preview for it.  Now that it is on netflix, I keep trying to convince Liam to watch it with me.  Finally I forced it upon him.  I can say that I enjoyed it more than he did, but he was ok with it.  He likes the visuals, but I think the moments between action would start to bore him a bit as it was more  of a story and not a musical like some kids movies are. 

In case you also have not seen The Croods, it is a 2013 3-D animated adventure comedy.  It did definitely have some hilarious moments that had me laughing.  The Croods was produced by Dreamworks Animation and distributed by 20th Century Fox.  The Croods are a cave dwelling prehistoric family that have their world turned upside down with the world starts to shift.  It takes place in a fictional prehistoric time with imaginary creatures.  The man of the cave (Grug) finds his place as leader and security provider threatened when a prehistoric genius gets the family to leave their comfort zone for future safety. His teenage rebel daughter Eep is enamored by Guy (the genius) which makes him even more adverse to the new guys "ideas."






The voice talent of The Croods is as follows:
Nicholas Cage as Grug (National Treasure, Ghost Rider, Lord of War, Windtalkers, Family Man)
Emma Stone as Eep  (The Help, Easy A, Amazing Spiderman, Zombieland, Superbad)
Ryan Reynolds as Guy (Green Lantern, Just Friends, Turbo, Definitely, Maybe; Smokin' Aces)
Catherine Keener as Ugga (40 Year Old Virgin, Captain Phillips, Capote, Death to Smoochy, 8 MM)
Cloris Leachman as Gran (Raising Hope, Beerfest, Malcolm in the Middle, Touched by an Angel)
Clark Duke as Thunk (Hot Tub Time Machine, Two & a Half Men, The Office, Greek, Kick-Ass)

The Croods premiered in the US in March of 2013.  It received mostly positive reviews and was considered a success with earnings of over $587 million on a $135 million budget.  This success caused the movie to launch a sequel that will be released in June in 2017 and a tv show that is already in development stages.  The Croods was the first feature film to be featured in 4DX format featuring strobe lights, tilting seats, blowing wind and fog as well as odor effects in Budapest, Hungary.  The Croods is the second highest grossing Dreamworks Film behind King Fu Panda. It received a lot higher reviews internationally and opened at number one in 54 countries.   It was nominated for many awards including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Overall I thought this was an excellent movie.  I think that the American crowd prefers the animated features with musicals.  I thought that the story line was great, it even made me cry, and had some great witty humor jokes built in.  I think that older kids and adults would enjoy it a lot more than my toddler did.  I definitely recommend this movie and give it a 4/5 stars. 

The Croods Movie Dreamworks Official Site

Frozen

This was the first movie that Liam ever saw in the theater.  Grandma was here and insisted on taking Liam to his first movie, and auntie Shayna came along as well.  I was very worried about Liam going to see a movie and actually sitting still through it at his age (he is three in case you don't know).  He actually did remarkably well...  Now as far as the movie selection, the big Disney movie showing at that time was Frozen.  It started off kind of awkward with the new revival initiative of Disney to try to add on snippets of old black and white Mickey cartoons at the beginning of movies.  Now Disney makes a living on mostly children's movies, and in so doing you think they would have picked a bit more of a tasteful excerpt.  Instead we had a cow flashing her udders and someone kidnapping and trying ti simulated take advantage of Minnie Mouse....  Now I didn't have a problem seeing it myself, but I did think that Disney studios have to know the society of parents and children right now and that it probably wasn't the greatest choice to show before a kid's movie....  With that being said let's move on to the actual movie.
Frozen is about two sisters Anna & Elsa.  Elsa is the elder sister and has a magic with ice, winter, snow.  This is something that can be used by evil if anyone were to find out and so her parents force her to hide it from everyone so that no one will ever be hurt, forcing her to look herself away while growing up.  Anna is the littler sister that has no idea why her sister is locking herself away and is spending her life being lonely.  When Elsa accidentally released some of her power on her coronation she runs away leaving Anna to fend for herself.  Anna only wants to find love and to have her sister as a friend, so they set out on a treacherous journey with unlikely allies in an attempt to save her sister and her kingdom.

Voices featured in this movie:
Anna is voiced by Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars, Sarah Marshall, Gossip Girl)
Elsa is voiced by Idina Menzel (Rent, Enchanted, Glee, wife of Taye Diggs)
Kristoff (an unlikely ally) is voiced by Jonathan Goff (Glee)

Frozen is a 3D computer animated musical fantasy comedy movie.  It was released in 2013 and is the 53rd Disney movie to be released.  It is loosely based on the story the Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson, which may explain why it has a bit of an older feel to it.   So far is has grossed $764 million worldwide and has won several awards.  The awards won include Golden Globe & Critic's Choice for Best Animated Feature as well as Critic's Choice award for Best Original Song for "Let It Go" also sung by Idina Menzel.  Frozen became Fandango's top advance ticket seller among animated features beating out Brave.  It is the 4th highest grossing 2013 film.


Disney has been looking at producing their version of the Snow Queen since the 1940s but had trouble getting the story to a place where they felt that the audience could relate to it.  They had a hard time modernizing it and trying to lighten up an originally dark and seemingly inhumane story.  One main way in which this happened was by making Anna & Elsa sisters.  In the late 1990s Disney picked the story back up and worked on it for almost a decade before it was scrapped again in 2002.  In 2008 a new idea with the film was pitched by director Chris Buck under the title of Anna & the Snow Queen with plans to use traditional animation and portray the Snow Queen as light-hearted as opposed to a villain, but by early 2010, there were again complications with making the story work.  In December of 2011 after the success of Tangled Disney decided to again pick up the story and move forward with 3D and a new development team.  With the character Anna now being written by Chris Buck as the Snow Queen's little sister they were able to show new dimensions in the relationships of the characters while subtracting a lot of the darkness away from the story.  Jennifer Lee (one of the screenwriters from Wreck-It-Ralph) was brought onto the team.  Her work and involvement became so involved and extensive that she ended up being promoted from screenwriter to songwriter and pre-devlopment and was brought up to director alongside Chris Buck.  This was a major accomplishment as in all of these years Jennifer Lee became the first woman to direct a full-length animated motion picture by Walt Disney Animation Studios. 

Frozen had a very nice clear and crisp picture.  It was definitely a musical and seemed like there were more songs than dialogue.  The songs were quite pretty though and easy to sing along.  I did however feel that the theme of the movie was more directed at the tweens-pre-teen age group as opposed to the younger crowd.  There wasn't much for a young child to relate to like there is in some Disney movies.  Liam was definitely enthralled with the snowman Olaf and I myself found Sven the reindeer to be the best character in the movie.  I did notice that with the older theme, that when the sister Anna finds her independence and possibly older, slightly darker stage that her whole appearance changed, her hair was now in a messed braid instead of in a tight orderly braid, and she was wearing a lower cute almost sheer dress, it was definitely showing that becoming darker is sexier and more appealing...  but perhaps I was reading too much into it.  On a positive note it did a great job of showing the independence of women and was the first Disney film to question a woman marrying a man that she just met.  There was the grand theme that true love comes in many forms.  My adult self sees Disney movies in a different light and as a mother knowing how much every little detail is sponged into the minds of youth.  Overall I give this film 4 out of 5 stars.  I would give it 5 stars because it had great songs and great characters, but it seems like there were a lot of holes in the story and if given more time it could have told more about the story instead of just touching upon elements such as Anna's power and the Trolls.

You can visit Disney's Official Site here: Frozen

I suggest not watching this hilarious unnecessarily censored video of excerpts from the movie unless you have seen it already,  It could ruin it for you.