Movie review
November 25, 2020 · 95 min · PG
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
The movie keeps pushing girl power the whole way through via the Thunder Sisters sequence where Gran, Eep, Ugga, Hope, and Dawn form an all-female warrior squad, ride wolf spiders, sing a power anthem, and rescue the kidnapped men. It repeatedly hammers embracing differences and family unity through the class clash between the primitive Croods and the smug, "better" Bettermans. Mild environmental jabs hit the Bettermans' farming for causing the monkey threat. The identity and gender elements sit right in the story engine and are impossible to miss.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for The Croods: A New Age.
Woke representation / casting
Animated voices feature diverse talent including Kelly Marie Tran as Dawn; no audience-visible forced diversity or mismatch with the prehistoric fantasy premise.
Woke political dialogue
Occasional light jokes about class and lifestyle differences between the two families; nothing explicit or modern activist.
Identity-driven story themes
Thunder Sisters girl power arc drives a major rescue sequence with women as warriors saving the men; recurring emphasis on embracing differences.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Comedic satire on the Bettermans as elitist with farming side effects; not modern activist framing of capitalism, patriarchy, or systemic oppression.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Minor scattered gripes about girl power and men-looking-dumb in Thunder Sisters; no major or sustained backlash claiming forced identity politics.
Creator track record context
All key creatives are standard DreamWorks family animation professionals with no pattern of activist or identity-driven work.
Production
