THE CROODS 2 U
OUT 5 FEBRUARY CINEMAS
Reuniting us with the prehistoric family from 2013’s The Croods, this animated adventure is a fine example of a sequel improving on the original. It zips along from the off, swiftly reintroducing us to caveman Grug (voiced by Nicolas Cage), wife Ugga (Catherine Keener), teenage kids Thunk (Clark Duke) and Eep (Emma Stone), their grandma (Cloris Leachman) and Eep’s boyfriend Guy (Ryan Reynolds).
The plot pivots on the Croods meeting the more ‘evolved’ Bettermans, Phil and Hope (Peter Dinklage, Leslie Mann) and their daughter Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran). This family doesn’t live like Neanderthals – they have things like ‘privacy’ and showers. Unsurprisingly, Grug gets the hump with these show-offs. The real curveball comes in the third act, with the arrival of an army of banana-seeking simians.
From here, The Croods 2: A New Age gets as weird as the crazy-eyed monkey that keeps popping up, the script nodding to everything from King Kong to ’80s kids’ fave ThunderCats. Amid all this, Cage goes (nearly) full Cage, his delivery suitably and superbly cartoonish – though Dinklage all-but tops him as the uber-smug Phil.
Well-versed in animation (the Kung Fu Panda films, Trolls), first-time director Joel Crawford keeps it vibrant and fast-paced, with just the right amount of retro-strangeness. With gags like Thunk staring out of a window at the landscape like a primitive TV, The Croods 2 smartly treads the line between adult and child experiences. Delightful.