Better than ICE AGE . . .

Rating: 8/10 (7 May 2013)

. . . and any of those live action movies with Brendan Frazier and animals (prehistoric or modern). THE CROODS is a quite watchable flick for moms and kids, with enough plot twists and turns thrown in to keep moms guessing and enough cute animals (such as the initially scary and eventually domesticated saber toothed tiger) jumbled on-screen to rivet the attention of the littler offspring. While it is true that Nicolas Cage as dad Grug is pretty much a stereotype as an over-protective, over-traditional father, the sense of imminent danger that a similar dad has in say FIDDLER ON THE ROOF is pretty much absent here, as composer Alan Silvestri's upbeat score sort of lets every movie veteran know that nothing REALLY bad is going to occur. There are a few wrinkles the writers have dreamed up, such as the method Grug and Guy manufacture to escape the clutches of the dread tar pit, which seemingly are beyond the limits of imagination for the out-of-ideas ICE AGE screenwriters. Hopefully, we will see a CROODS 2 prior to an ICE AGE 13.