Animated family films have always been considered to be a sure thing at the box office, but as we recently found out with Dreamworks’ Rise of the Guardians, that’s not always the case. Unless Guardians rakes in a boatload of money near Christmas, it stands to lose nearly $50 million. Could the same fate befall future Dreamworks projects, such as The Croods?
We’ve already seen the first trailer for The Croods, and the new one (above) further indicates that the animated film has all the makings of solid family-friendly entertainment. There’s some humor, a wide-eyed sense of wonderment, some stunning visuals, and a talented ensemble voice cast, including Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Clark Duke (Kick-Ass), Catherine Keener (40-Year-Old Virgin), Cloris Leachman (Raising Hope) and Ryan Reynolds.
After watching the trailer, you’ll see how the film can easily play to the wide swath of demographics. There’s the strong father (Cage), who simply wants to protect and provide for his family and doesn’t want things to change. Then there’s his daughter (Stone), who yearns for adventure and wants to get away from the everyday normalities of home life. There’s also the somewhat senile grandmother (Leachman), the dense, brute of a boy (Duke) and the strapping young explorer (Reynolds) who develops a romantic interest for the daughter. Of course, these are very safe, tried and true archetypes that we’ve seen many times before in movies, but they’re also very relatable to a general audience.
‘The Croods’
Although you get the family dynamic that’s at work here and the general story arc of a family coming together on a life-affirming adventure, the trailer focuses much of its energy on generating laughs and lightheartedness that should play well with a large audience. There will certainly be plenty of contemporary humor juxtaposed against the Croods’ primitive world (hopefully no Geico jokes), as well as fish-out-of-water jokes as the family journeys into new territory. So, there should be a little something for everybody here.
Considering all they had to work with and what we are seeing so far, it seems that co-directors and co-writers Kirk DeMicco (Space Chimps) and Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon) made a film that has the potential to be a big mainstream hit, but after the flop of Rise of the Guardians, I suppose nothing is a sure thing these days.
Check out The Croods when it hits theatres on March 22nd, 2013.
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Finally!!! Nick Cage, world’s greatest actor, gets the part he was born for!
The rise of the guardians just didn’t look interesting. Just because you try to make Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy cool doesn’t make them so and, to me at least, made the movie unappealing. The Croods on the other hand looks like it could be one of dreamworks classics. It looks funny and has an interesting story.
My brother showed me the first trailer not to long ago. He asked me what the first thought that popped into my head was during the trailer. I turned to him and said: “THE BEES!”
The Flintstones remake..hm !
So damn funny! I’m in!!
So are they Homo Sapiens, or Neanderthals?
This is a fantastic idea of taking something like Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave, and making them journey past the shadows. The father(cage) completely embraces his instincts and jaded sense of ‘anything new is bad.’ It’s The Land Before Time, except they immediately found their travel crew, and the beautiful ‘Land’ they never knew existed but now have to leave. How to Train Your Dragon was an instant classic for me, and really smartly done and written. I see that now Dreamworks have gone Centuries behind that and am trying a more Primitive Family of travelers unlike the animals used for Ice Age, which has a familiar feel to this. The humor lies in their naivety to things we consider so basic and ‘common knowledge,’ we have to remember some things hadn’t been learned ‘the hard way yet.’ Case in point the father thinking Tall dry grass as a typical way of hiding from danger, unless that danger is fire attached to your person. I’m still not sold on how this will be a fun and somewhat original take on the travel story, but i’m Excited to see what they churn out after How to Train Your Dragon was soo damn good.