The far, far past was a dangerous time for humanity.
What with carnivorous, hyper-coloured kangaroo/armadillo hybrids, jagged ice trees that surge from the ground with no warning, landscapes that range from deserty and rocky to dangerously giant bug-filled and earnest post-cave dwelling hipsters, there was a lot that could go wrong for your newly-emergent early human.
Wait, a second – “earnest post-cave dwelling hipsters”? Was that even a thing back then?
If you are to believe The Croods: A New Age, then yes, hipsters were definitely the kind of danger you should have your “we haven’t been attacked in five minutes/things are looking good” radar, what with their scornfulness of your caveman ways, their adherence to just the right footwear and hairstyles and their NIMBY ways that suggested, post the initial gushy welcome anyway, that your kind weren’t welcome in their newly-evolved, oh-so-civilised ways.
For Grugg and Ugga Crood (Nicholas Cage and Katherine Kenner) respectively), and their brood consisting of Eep (Emma Stone), Thunk (Clark Duke), baby Sandy (Kailey Crawford), Gran (Cloris Leachman) and Guy (Ryan Reynolds), that presents a pretty big problem.
We know from meeting this “pack must stay together” family in The Croods, that they are a gloriously rough and tumble bunch who sleep in a stack, eat their food furiously and messily (assuming they can find it) and still wear last season’s furs – so definitely not the height of hipsterdom.
But they also love each fiercely – even if Eep, like all teenagers finds her parents’ oversight, particularly that of helicopter (should that be pterodactyl?) father Ugg, all a bit too much to bear – something which counts for a lot in their vividly technicolour world in which there is as much danger as there is the promise of “tomorrow”, a special place that Guy, who gets taken into the family into the first film, is searching for at the behest of his much-lamented, tar-swallowed parents.
By some miracle, which means Ugg, once again stumbles onto something and then claims it some sort of well thought-out tactic that is proof of how a father and provider he is, the Croods stumble upon the walled-off sanctuary paradise created by hipster early humans, Phil and Hope Betterman (Peter Dinklage and Leslie Mann) who, with bouncy, excitable daughter Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran), have shown just how cool and well fed the next stage of humanity’s evolution cna be.
It’s all very civilised, thank you very much but as the Croods settle in, – the invite to stay is predicated on the fact that the Bettermans knew Guy’s parents and they are the closest he has to any historical family ties – it becomes hilariously apparent that the Bettermans see themselves as a far better class of person than the Croods who really don’t look the part of people climbing further up the ladder of evolutionary progress.
You know, of course, that The Croods: A New Age is going to bring the two families together in a happy blizzard of mutual understanding and supportive love, but the way it gets there is a full of so much anarchically joyous, vibrantly sill, off-the-wall fun that you care not for its, to be fair, benign predictability.
After all, how could you not love Gran, played by the now sadly departed Cloris Leachman, as a feisty warrior chick who helps the women of the two families save the men from banana-sacrificing Punch Monkeys – the scenes involving these animals, who “speak” using only punches”, is next level, visual slapstick hilarious – or Thunk who falls addictively in love with “Window” aka ancient TV where you can sit and watch all kinds of things happen outside your room.
Many of the jokes aren’t that sophisticated but when they are carried off with as much chutzpath and gleefully OTT fun as many of the gags in The Croods: A New Age you care not a jot because you are just having such a comedically frenzied good time.
Riven by bold splashes of riotous colour, animals so audaciously weird such as Wolf Spiders (literally a wolf on a spider’s body) that you can be certain they never appear in the fossil record (more’s the pity really) and scenes so ballistically full on that you wonder how they are ever going to pull up in time (somehow they do but only for a second before plunging into the next lavish piece of funny, colour-soaked action), The Croods: A New Age is that uplifting film about the prehistoric world that you have been craving.
What makes it such a pleasure to watch is that amidst all this joke-laden chaos, sits a narrative that tugs at the heartstrings in ways you might, and might not, expect.
It’s not Pixar-level nuanced but that’s totally okay because the obviousness of the coming together of the two disparate families who are bonded by Eep and Dawn’s super close instant friendship and Eep and Guy’s head over heels teen love affair with which The Croods: A New Age has a great deal of soundtrack-backed fun, matches overall, pedal-to-the-metal, full speed ahead hilarity of this barely-pauses-for-breath animated delight.
In fact, all of the big revelatory, hearts on sleeves moments occur when everyone is in real peril, traditionally not the best time, since you’re otherwise occupied saving yourself from marauding enemies, for deep and meaningfuls.
But then The Croods: A New Age is not your average ancient romp and nor is it your usual well-behaved animated flick.
It is happy to make merry with the fossil record, scatter the accepted wisdom of archaeological learnings to the shark-filled winds and accept that being loopy on a manic scale is entirely a fair way to go.
And it is; The Croods: A New Age is a film that is more than happy to throw all the rules out the window, to parody its characters but with great and enduring affection, and to make some form of all kinds of social norms in the pursuit of endless, luminously colourful and hyper-funny laughs.
Discreet it is not, but in an age blighted by pandemic and near escapes from fascism, having something as gloriously good as The Croods: A New Age to brighten your dats is an incalculable joy, reminding you that while you may not always see eye-to-eye with someone, you may be surprised just how much you have in common (although you can only hope you don’t discover this while being pursued by a giant, razor-haired monkey with a love of eating human beings disguised as bananas).