SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!
Searching for a safer habitat, the prehistoric Crood family discovers an idyllic, walled-in paradise that meets all of its needs. Unfortunately, they must also learn to live with the Bettermans — a family that’s a couple of steps above the Croods on the evolutionary ladder. As tensions between the new neighbors start to rise, a new threat soon propels both clans on an epic adventure that forces them to embrace their differences, draw strength from one another, and survive together.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The Croods: A New Age Plot Summary and Synopsis
A flashback shows the death of Guy’s parents when he was a kid. As they drown in tar, they tell him to find somewhere called ‘tomorrow’. He goes on a long journey and meets a young Belt before taking him along for the ride.
The Croods, along with Guy and their pets Chunky and Douglas, are still searching for a place to settle down, all the while surviving many dangerous creatures along the way. Grug is repeatedly annoyed at Eep and Guy’s blossoming romance. As Grug walks off in anger, he soon comes across a giant wall and leads the whole pack to them.
They are soon caught in a net and are released by the owners of the land, a couple called the Bettermans, Phil and Hope, who are revealed to have been friends with Guy’s parents before their deaths and Guy’s disappearance. The Bettermans welcome the Croods to their giant tree-home as house guests, where they meet their daughter and Guy’s old friend, Dawn, who immediately befriends Eep.
Life with the Bettermans becomes degrading for Grug due to the Bettermans soon reveal themselves to be technologically advanced, better-mannered, and visibly condescending toward the Croods, believing that Guy is better off with them and hatch a scheme to get Guy to leave the Croods.
Phil eventually takes Grug to his secret man-cave, a sauna-like place behind some waterfalls, where he manipulates him into believing Guy should leave their pack in exchange for Eep staying with the Croods. Meanwhile, Hope angers Ugga by insulting her family’s lifestyle and attempts to manipulate her like Phil, but fails, thus leading to Ugga and Grug’s decision to leave.
Sometime after this, Eep discovers that Dawn has never left the inside of the wall. Relating this to the solitude she faced in her cave, Eep convinced Dawn to use Chunky to escape the land and jump their wall for a joyride that ends with a bee stinging Dawn and having her hand swell up. When Eep takes her back home, Guy, upon finding out, chides her for her recklessness, ending with him insensitively calling her a ‘cave girl’. At dinner, tensions rise between the parents, Guy and Eep, especially when Dawn’s swelling is revealed, culminating in Grug accidentally reveal his and Phil’s deal.
Having enough, the Croods decide to leave in the morning, but Guy decides to stay after he and Eep have a falling out. Soon, the land is attacked by “Punch Monkeys” (monkey-sized but with human-like strength) on account of Grug and Ugga eating a bunch of bananas the Bettermans hoard around their land and have forbidden Grug from eating.
Phil reveals he sends the Punch Monkeys the bananas every day so that they leave the Bettermans alone and since Grug and Ugga ate them, the Punch Monkeys get upset and kidnap Grug, Phil, and Guy and take them to their homeland.
As the men are taken, the remaining Croods and Bettermans leave to rescue the men but eventually get marooned on an island full of Wolf-Spiders, wolves with the characteristics of arachnids. During their time together, Hope finally snaps, lashing out at the Croods and running off.
However, during an encounter with the Wolf-Spiders, she learns the error of her ways and accepts the Croods. When they learn the location of the men, they name themselves ” The Thunder Sisters”, after a female-exclusive clan Gran was in when she was younger. At the Punch Monkey home, Grug, Guy, and Phil soon discover that Phil’s diversion of a river to irrigate his farm unknowingly deprived the Punch Monkeys of their water supply and that the Punch Monkeys need the bananas not only to eat, but to offer to a large primate monster called the Spiny Mandrilla in hopes of appeasing it.
The Punch Monkeys make Grug and Phil fight gladiator-style to see who will be the sacrifice and when they wear each other out, they exchange their bitter feelings with each other, making Guy regret what he said during his and Eep’s fallout.
Soon, the Punch Monkeys dress all three men as bananas to sacrifice to the giant Spiny Mandrilla. Grug and Phil apologize for their poor behavior and for putting pressure on Guy, but just as they are about to be eaten, the Thunder Sisters show up to rescue them.
A long and perilous battle ends with Guy and Eep on a giant skull-chandelier where they reconcile and use it to defeat the Spiny Mandrilla by using fire to sever the ropes and send the skull falling into the abyss below. For one last scare it climbs out of the depths and grabs Eep by her “peanut toe”, which she uses as a prosthetic phalange, and pulls it off, sending it plummeting to its demise and allowing the families to escape.
The Croods: A New Age Ending
With their differences finally settled, the Bettermans allow the Croods to live in their land as neighbors, with Guy realizing that Eep is his ‘tomorrow’ and he and Eep soon move into one of the Bettermans’ bedrooms together which Grug approves of and the Punch Monkeys become their next-door neighbors.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).