Nicolas Cage is dominating the Netflix streaming charts, but not because of any of the more recognizable titles in his filmography.
The 2013 animated family adventure film The Croods currently ranks at No. 4 on the Top 10 movies list on Netflix U.S., where it sits alongside other hits like Geostorm (No. 3), The Life List (No. 2), and One of Them Days (no. 1). The movie also sits at No. 1 on Netflix Kids.
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The DreamWorks Animation film, directed by Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco, starred Cage as Grug Crood, the overprotective patriarch of The Crood family during the fictional prehistoric Pliocene era known as “The Croodaceous.” The voice cast also included Emma Stone (Eep Crood), Ryan Reynolds (Guy), Catherine Keener (Ugga Crood), and Clark Duke (Thunk Crood), among others.
While Cage may be best known for his portrayal of Ben Gates in the National Treasure film series, The Croods marked his most successful film in terms of box office takeaway. The movie released in theaters on March 22, 2013, going on to gross $587.3 million on a budget of $135–175 million. For comparison, Cage’s remaining Top 3, National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse 3D (2018), respectively grossed 457.3 million and 374.6 million globally, per date from The Numbers.
More than just its box office success, The Croods made the rounds in the awards circuit. The film nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Although The Croods ultimately lost out on those two awards, it won several Annie Awards, including for Best Animated Feature and Outstanding Achievement for Character Animation in a Feature Production, as well as a BMI Film & TV Award.
In terms of overall audience and critics reception, The Croods doesn’t rank among the best of Cage’s body of work. In fact, it doesn’t even crack the Top 10. The film holds a 71% critics score and 77% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and while those numbers make it certified fresh, they sit far lower than the actor’s other highest-rated projects, 1993’s post-Western neo-noir thriller Red Rock West (highest in terms of critics rating with a 98%) and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (highest in audience score with a 94%).
The Croods is currently streaming on Netflix alongside several of Cage’s titles, including The Frozen Ground, Massive Talent, and History of Swear Words, the 2021 Netflix original docuseries hosted by Cage that about the history and impact of the most notorious English swear words.
