"The Croods" opens with rebellious teen daughter Eep (voiced by Emma Stone) speaking in voiceover about her family's trials and travails as one of the first families of cavemen to roam the planet. How would she even know the term "cavemen," which probably wasn't created until thousands of years later? It is best to not think so hard about such logistics, and instead mourn that the participation of Emma Stone (2013's "Gangster Squad") is where the inspiration within this distaff computer-animated feature from Dreamworks begins and ends. For a minute or two of her delightfully acerbic narration, she reminds of her unforgettable heroine, Olive Penderghast, from 2010's "Easy A." Once that's finished and the rest of the film proper gets underway, "The Croods" plummets into terminal mediocrity, marked by dull, flat-footed characters, rote pacing, a conflict in desperate need of a more clear-cut villain, and the kind of murky, worthless 3D that only hinders the visuals and gives the 3D format a bad reputation.
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