No one said survival was fun.

The Croods

(2013)

DreamWorks’ increasingly wonky animations, in terms of both quality and box office, are getting so that even Jeffrey Katzenberg has to admit they’re a bit shonky. Still, he’s able to put on a brace face as the studio looks likely to get a major shot in the arm with the release of How to Train Your Dragon 2 (we’re talking Despicable Me 2 and Shrek 2 gains on a first outing here). But how long they can sustain themselves with a reliance on sequels for coffers nourishment is debatable. If Turbo screwed the pooch then The Croods did surprisingly decent business, making the most of an uncrowded March 2013 release date. Its success does rather make the case of undiscerning adults eager to take their kids to see something, anything, just to keep them quiet for 90 minutes, since the movie is a desperately middling affair; something of an Ice Age clone (a trek to safety as the environment changes) but with humans (well, Homo Neanderthalensis and a Cro-Magnon). And replete with every join-the-dots element the frankly lazy studio can muster. And a really crappy title. If the titular family had been farting, belching and making vile gestures throughout the movie, there might have been a decent pun in there.

The “Never not be afraid” starting point isn’t an okayish one; a family holed up in their cave save for occasional excursions to get hold of a bite to eat. It would have been a whole lot better if it had developed an even slightly subversive theme, though. Emma Stone as the chunky but not especially beetle-browed Eep is your standard issue rebellious teenager, and Nicolas Cage is the typically over-protective but well-meaning dad (in this case not so bright either). Both make an impression, performance-wise, but Catherine Keener as wife Ugga barely gets a look in. There’s a Les Dawson-esque running gag involving Grug’s wish for his mother-in-law to expire (Cloris Leachman as Gran) that kind of works because it’s so retro (definitely one for the parents; grandparents, even). When Guy arrives, Ryan Reynolds voicing a noticeably smarter semi-alpha male (albeit afraid of the dark), Eep is smitten and Grug threatened. So you can see the trajectory from there; Grug’s emotional journey etc. towards acceptance and proving his patriarchal beneficence.

Of the two directors, the influence of Space Chimps’ (doh!) Kirk De Micco is felt more strongly than How to Train Your Dragon’s Chris Sanders. The picture has a varied history, starting out with an attempt by DeMicco and John Cleese (there’s nothing discernably Cleesey here, in his first movie writing credit since Fierce Creatures; those post-divorce bills must still be biting hard) to adapt The Twits which then segued into a caveman story Sanders picked up. Then DeMicco joined again as co-director. All of which is more interesting than the movie itself. Lacking a sufficiently interesting cast of characters, and with bland design work (airbrushed ape men is about the size of it; too audience-friendly to go the full ugly, the family ends up with sporting the alarming combination of thickset and large-eyed features), it’s left to the whacked out incidental pleasures to sporadically raise a smile.

If nothing else, DreamWorks can be relied on to provide, amongst the carefully rehashed plot beats, some genuinely mirthful detours. If Guy’s pet sloth Belt is your over-familiar kooky weirdo animal sidekick, the scene in which the Croods first encounter fire (“Try hiding from it in the tall grass”) is satisfyingly undiluted (one have expected a careful instruction that the little ones not play with the stuff). The Stone Age-modern inventions are too sub-Flintstones clever-cute, in that “everything’s one long sugar rush pop video action montage” way these animations have a habit of becoming, but there’s some inspired lunacy involving puppet birds and (later) a puppet sabre tooth tiger that wouldn’t look so out of place in a Looney Tunes.

Those moments of inventiveness are a reminder of the better moments in the Madagascar trilogy, which at least had memorably distinctive lead characters when all fell down in the plot department. The Croods has no such luck, yet the picture has clearly made enough to have a sequel scheduled. One can expect second tier business along the lines of Fox’s Rio, as this is far behind the quality of How to Train Your Dragon, or even the “it says it right there in the title” Kung Fu Panda (how they can get a third of those made, when the second was virtually indistinguishable from the first, is beyond me). It’s a shame the studio’s ideas have become so tepid, and each underperformer makes them even less adventurous (Mr. Peabody & Sherman had an arresting idea and origins, but fed through the studio blender comes out looking much the same as anything else; Rise of the Guardians looked good as a premise but suffered from utterly banal plotting). Alternating (semi-) original fare with sequels is probably a (relatively) wise financial move – even Pixar has lost it’s creative backbone, so one can hardly have a go at their always less artistic rival – but it’s four years since DreamWorks last made a great movie. And, apart from a sequel to that movie, they don’t look like they’re going to buck their self-imposed trend any time soon.

**1/2

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

The Krishna died of a broken finger? I mean, is that a homicide?

Miami Blues (1990) (SPOILERS) If the ‘90s crime movie formally set out its stall in 1992 with Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs , another movie very quietly got in there first at the beginning of the decade. Miami Blues picked up admiring reviews but went otherwise unnoticed on release, and even now remains under-recognised. The tale of “blithe psychopath” Federick J. Frenger, Jr., the girl whose heart he breaks and the detetive sergeant on his trail, director George Armitage’s adaptation of Charles Willeford’s novel wears a pitch black sense of humour and manages the difficult juggling act of being genuinely touching with it. It’s a little gem of a movie, perfectly formed and concisely told, one that more than deserves to rub shoulders with the better-known entries in its genre. One of the defining characteristics of Willeford’s work, it has been suggested , is that it doesn’t really fit into the crime genre; he comes from an angle of character rather than plot or h

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

The Illumi-what-i?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) (SPOILERS) In which Sam Raimi proves that he can stand proudly with the best – or worst – of them as a good little foot soldier of the woke apocalypse. You’d expect the wilfully anarchic – and Republican – Raimi to choke on the woke, but instead, he’s sucked it up, grinned and bore it. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is so slavishly a production-line Marvel movie, both in plotting and character, and in nu-Feige progressive sensibilities, there was no chance of Sam staggering out from beneath its suffocating demands with anything more than a few scraps of stylistic flourish intact.

People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002.

Turning Red (2022) (SPOILERS) Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in to Disney+, basically (so ones with either considerable or zero resistance to woke). Take a guess which of these isn’t getting press in reference to the movie? And by a process of elimination is probably what it it’s really about (you know in the same way most Pixars, as far back as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc . can be given an insi

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

You tampered with the universe, my friend.

The Music of Chance (1993) (SPOILERS) You won’t find many adaptations of Paul Auster’s novels. Original screenplays, yes, a couple of which he has directed himself. Terry Gilliam has occasionally mentioned Mr. Vertigo as in development. It was in development in 1995 too, when Philip Haas and Auster intended to bring it to the screen. Which means Auster presumably approved of Haas’ work on The Music of Chance (he also cameos). That would be understandable, as it makes for a fine, ambiguous movie, pregnant with meaning yet offering no unequivocal answers, and one that makes several key departures from the book yet crucially maintains a mesmerising, slow-burn lure.

I only know what I’ve been programmed to believe. But, of course, the same goes for you.

Raised by Wolves Season One (SPOILERS) Ridley Scott’s latest transhumanist tract is so stuffed with required lore, markers and programming, it’s a miracle it manages to tell a half-engaging story along the way. Aaron Guzikowski ( Prisoners ) is the credited creator, but it has the Ridders stamp of dour dystopia all over it, complete with Darius Wolski ( Prometheus ) cinematography setting the tone. Which means bleak grey skies, augmented by South Africa this time, rather than Iceland. Raised by Wolves is a reliable mix of wacko twist plotting and clumsy, slack-jawed messaging; like the Alien prequels, it will surely never be seen through to a conclusion, but as an agenda platform it’s never less than engaging (and also frequently, for the same reasons, exasperating).

You’re like a human mummy!

The Lost City (2022) (SPOILERS) Perhaps the most distressing part of The Lost City , a Romancing the Stone riff that appears to have been packaged by the Hollywood equivalent of a processed cheese plant lacking its primary ingredient (that would be additives), is the possibility that Daniel Radcliffe is the only viable actor left standing in Tinseltown. That’s if the suggestions at least two of the performers here – Sandra Bullock and Brad Pitt – are deep faked in some way, shape or form, and the other name – Channing Tatum – is serving hard atonement time. If the latter’s choices generally weren’t so abysmal and his talent in arears, I’d assume that was the only explanation for him showing up in this dreck.

Okay, just jump right into my nightmare, the water is warm.

Jerry Maguire (1996) (SPOILERS) I didn’t much like Jerry Maguire at the time, which I suspect is intrinsically linked to the fact that I didn’t much like Tom Cruise at the time. I’m still not really a massive fan of either, but the latter at least made an effort to rein in his most irksome traits subsequently. Jerry Maguire , however, finds him drawing on the same “bag of tricks” that mystifyingly transfixed his fan base a decade before in Top Gun . Bonnie Hunt suggested the toughest part of the role was “ playing a character that doesn’t like Tom Cruise ”. I wouldn’t have had that problem. I do not like Tom and Jerry.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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