Rewatched The Croods last night (on the job, what can I say), and having the chance to sit down with it again, I think I may have been a little flippant with my remarks last time about the story. There's no denying that on paper it is a very by numbers sort of family fare, but it WORKS, it works DAMN WELL. And I was thinking about it, trying to figure out why this works so well when so many others don't, and all I could come up with is that The Croods does it unironically and sincerely. They don't try to sneak in all those little nods to the audience and self aware bs that seems to be all the rage. It just commits to the story it's going to tell and then does it, and does it good.

And weirdly, that kinda feels refreshing. There's none of the weird little plot twists of whatever that the filmmakers felt they needed to add to make it "fresh" or "modern", it embraces what it is and puts all it's effort into doing it awesomely. And it felt good.

But yeah, otherwise, world design is still amazing, Belt is still cute as hell and for some reason the audience felt the need to start cutting large amounts of onions right around the end of the movie, not sure what was up with that.

Still a thumbs up, and definitely a little higher than I gave it credit for on first viewing.

Two more points lost for also omitting One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead.

/I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS

EDIT:  The Sure Thing especially is a semi-forgotten gem that deserves a much higher position on the "Best '80s Comedies Evar" List than it tends to get.    One of my faves.