The Lost Boards part 3 January 27, 2013 18:28

The Croods are a caveman family, possibly the last caveman family on a crumbling continent.  They are what you'd expect, not the brightest bunch, with beginners' minds.  They only emerge from their cave every three or four days or so, and only in the daylight.  By sundown they are back inside their sealed cave.  The Croods cave is the only thing that stands between themselves and the super predators that rule the desert night.  If their cave is their main survival strategy, the second is their pack behavior.  They Croods are an extremely cohesive group, never being out of sight of one another.  Ever.  In a world with no hospitals or telephones, staying together is critical.  The father, Grug, takes his role seriously, constantly checking up on everyone and herding them here and there.

Our film kicks off when the Croods lose their cave.  Without the cave they will have only a few hours of daylight before they will have to face the night for the first time.

That's the set up you see in the trailers.  But what you won't see is this tiny horse.  He's at the end of this series of drawings, and he's a little rough, but you'll get the idea.  He was dropped from the film only after he was built and rigged, and performed wonderfully in the talented hands of James Baxter, who took him through his paces.  It is one of those hard choices you have to make during the development of one of these movies, and dropping the pony wasn't an easy decision.  Who knows?  Maybe someday he'll get another chance.  At the time of this boarding he was one of the things the Croods met on their prehistoric road trip.  The pony took a shine to Grug, despite the fact that Grug wanted nothing to do with him.  Grug was always chasing him away, only to have the pony return and linger just out of arm's reach.  In the Croods world, all animals are to be avoided - even the smallish ones would gladly trip you and bite you.  So a friendly animal just didn't make sense to Grug.

The pony picked out the one Crood that was least likely to accept him.  The pony saw something good in Grug and was quietly devoted to him, following him everywhere.  There was a hopeless, heartbreaking quality to the relationship that I liked.