The Croods: A New Age: Film Review

Vocal cast: Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann, Peter Dinklage

Director: Joel Crawford

Seven years after its first outing, the stone age family returns in a sequel that's all about the zany, and the gorgeous visuals than a massively strong story.

With Eep and Guy (Stone and Reynolds) still going strong, the prehistoric Croods are continuing to search for a safer home, where something is not always waiting to kill them. But when they discover a walled paradise run by the Betterman family (Mann and Dinklage), who are a couple of steps ahead of them on the evolution scale, it becomes a battle between neighbours...

The parenting parable that is The Croods: A New Age is good strong family film that may lack some of the originality of the first film but which delivers a frenetic and fun 90 minutes at the movies.

It helps that the animation is gorgeously presented, from wondrously coloured vistas to bright hues writ large upon the screen. The whole film sings with vibrancy and while it doesn't reinvent the stone age wheel, its zaniness does occasionally come with a price.

Lessons are espoused with ease and understanding, but in the final third of the film, there's a slight lull, before the script throws one last wacky turn into proceedings. There are times when it feels like there's a lot going on on the screen, but the all-ages fun element papers over some of the cracks of the narrative.

The world-widening of The Croods: A New Age delivers more options for spinoffs of the Stone Age, and in truth, that's no bad thing. Sure, there's a level of emotion missing from this prehistoric proffering, but this is full-on family fun that more than delivers a few life lessons in among the full-on animated antics.