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Rating: Every successful film, especially if it's animated, legitimately deserves a sequel. Dreamworks, in this case, has taken its time. The original goes back to 2013, "The Croods," which was released during the Easter holidays here and was a resounding success (€11,522,826 at the box office), and it was a good film, it must be said. The sequel was released 7 years later, in 2020, in the USA, because in Italy we had to wait until 2021 as, famously, at that time one could not even leave the house.
In the first film, the prehistoric adventures of the Croods family were narrated, who first discover fire, then must survive the upheavals of the ice ages, all seasoned with family matters that see children rebel against parents, an overprotective father, and an excessively energetic grandmother. Monsters and prehistoric animals galore, and a technical execution that pushed the limits of perfection with camera feats (tracking, long takes) that raised the bar on what could be done in a cartoon in an (almost) unexpected way.
The sequel disappointed many, the critics slammed it, and the public did not reward it. I may be odd, but I liked it a lot. I find it fun and up-to-date. What happens, in a few words: the Croods family seems peaceful, reconciled, especially in family relationships, and they have even found a happy land in which to live, idyllic and colorful. However, they discover that this land of happiness is populated by the snobbish Betterman family, prehistoric people who have somehow discovered the comforts of life and want to evolve to a higher intellectual stage compared to the rough Croods still tied to the rites of caves, wild hunting, and, the point is all here, patriarchy. In the Betterman family, man and woman are on the same level (both unbearable), while in the Croods, the man is the one who must feed the family and the woman, according to the head of the clan, should stay home to take care of the children (it's a pity that Mama Croods often proves to be more courageous and intellectually open than her archaic husband).
In times of woke and female empowerment, Dreamworks also adapts, but it does not give in to easy fashionable compromises, as someone has stated (perhaps without having seen the film). It is true, that all the female characters in the film seem superior to the men (a special mention to the usual, gigantic, Grandma Croods) and that the friendship between the two daughters of the respective families smooths out potential gags that the film could have set off (and that, up until that point, it had initiated), it is also, however, true that the male characters are perhaps the best delineated and more complex. Papa Betterman is an insufferable radical-chic but the reason why is well told in the finale while Papa Croods alternates, throughout the film, contrasting emotions that make him a doubtful figure who courageously challenges all his certainties about life, family, education, and marriage in the end.
The depiction of the (semi) happy land where the Croods and Betterman families attempt to coexist is very successful, and the frenetic pace in the second half literally takes off, as do the numerous gags about the contrasts between the two families (ultimately played entirely on the fear of change, of altering one's existence based on current times), minimizing sermons. In the end, let there be a message, but let it not be pedantic and boring.
It was said how the public rejected the film, especially in Europe (in the USA it did decidedly better) and how even the fans of the first film did not truly defend it. And Dreamworks closed the doors on any project for a third film. A pity, in my opinion, it was a saga that deserved a much better fate.
Characters and voice actors (original/Italian): Grug (Nicolas Cage/Francesco Pannofino); Guy (Ryan Reynolds/Leo Gassmann); Eep (Emma Stone/Alice Pagani); Ugga (Catherine Keener/Laura Boccanera); Thunk (Clark Duke/Luigi Morville); Gran (Cloris Leachman/Paola Giannetti); Phil (Peter Dinklage/Alessandro Gassmann); Hope (Leslie Mann/Virginia Raffaele); Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran/Benedetta Porcaroli).
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