Vibe
The Croods: A New Age finds the prehistoric family discovering a walled utopia maintained by the Bettermans, a more 'evolved' family who look down on the Croods while secretly needing their resilience. Directed by Joel Crawford, the sequel is a warmer and more focused film than a seven-year gap between productions might suggest — the Betterman family's passive-aggressive superiority gives the comedy a sharp social edge, and the eventual alliance between the two families earns its moment.
Watch for
- The Betterman family as comic antagonists, whose combination of privilege, condescension, and genuine good intentions makes them both funny and specific.
- Eep and Dawn's friendship, which develops parallel to the parental conflict and is given its own proper arc.
- The film's creature design continuity with the original — the same inventive hybrid-animal aesthetic, pushed into new territory.
- The climactic action sequence, which is more inventive than the sequel premise suggests.
Production notes
Directed by Joel Crawford, who had spent years as a story artist on DreamWorks Animation productions before taking on his first feature. The film was in production during the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring the entire production team to work remotely for substantial portions of the schedule. Peter Dinklage and Leslie Mann joined the cast as Phil and Hope Betterman — characters designed to embody a specific contemporary type: socially progressive, materially privileged, genuinely well-intentioned, and completely unaware of how condescending their helpfulness reads to the people they have decided to improve. The seven-year gap between the original and sequel required the creature design team to develop new hybrid animals consistent with the first film's aesthetic while demonstrating creative evolution.
Trivia
- The film was released during the COVID-19 pandemic in November 2020, significantly impacting its theatrical performance.
- Peter Dinklage and Leslie Mann joined the cast as Phil and Hope Betterman — characters designed to embody a specific kind of well-meaning but condescending progressivism.
- Joel Crawford, the film's director, had previously worked as a story artist on multiple DreamWorks Animation productions before taking on his first feature.
- The Croods: A New Age earned $170 million worldwide under pandemic conditions, a result considered strong given the theater closures.
- The Betterman compound — its walled garden, its controlled agriculture, its curated self-sufficiency — was deliberately designed to resemble a specific contemporary idealized domestic aesthetic: the kind of perfectly curated homestead that represents a certain class aspiration. The production team consulted with anthropologists about what a more developed prehistoric culture would actually look like, then exaggerated the most recognizable contemporary aspects to make the social commentary immediate without becoming didactic.
Legacy
The Croods: A New Age earned $170 million worldwide under significantly challenged theatrical conditions — released during ongoing pandemic restrictions in November 2020, with theater capacity limited in most markets. The result was considered strong given those constraints. The film's commercial success set up a third installment and demonstrated the franchise's continued audience loyalty seven years after the original. The Betterman family's passive-aggressive superiority gave the film a social comedy edge that made it feel more contemporary than its prehistoric setting suggests, and Joel Crawford's debut as a feature director demonstrated the creative depth DreamWorks Animation had developed in its story department.