ANI-MOVIES, *The Croods: A New Age

Joel Crawford was given the reigns of the Puss In Boots sequel which took everyone by surprise, but before that he directed another DreamWorks sequel, The Croods: A New Age. Released 7 years after the original, this continues the prehistoric sitcom as the titular family finally reach some other humans. This took longer to release because of the pandemic which caused much of the work to be done by creators working in lockdown from home. The Croods was doing good enough as a franchise with an animated TV prequel, and was given a follow-up taking place after The New Age. All the original cast returns with this being Cloris Leachman's voice over swansong, plus the addition of Peter Dinklage and Kelly Marie Tran makes the new talent welcoming.

Still on the look for a perfect settlement in their new country, Guy and Eep get further along in their young romance. Conveniently, Grug discovers a family called the Bettermans made of Phil, Hope, and their daughter Dawn who managed to create their own sealed off paradise all because they cut off the water supply to a valley to their home. The Bettermans were friends of Guy's family and they got separated before his parents died, and now Phil along with Hope plan to get Guy to be Dawn's husband, even though he's already betrothed to Eep. Grug and Ugga pick up that the Bettermans are trying to push them away, so get back at them for eating all the bananas which is the one forbidden fruit the Bettermans have a rule for. Turns out, Phil would give all the bananas to an army of punchy monkeys who in turn offer them to their giant mandrill overlord, and they all kidnap all the mens. So now, it is up to the remaining females to rescue them as they ride in on wolf-spiders to defeat the primates and save their families.

The Croods: A New Age is a good animated movie sequel with an noticable upgrade in the animation, although the designs on the Bettermans seem like they were copied from a cache of unused DreamWorks background characters. A large number of the jokes fall flat, and the movie is overly reliant on needledrop moments for their soundtrack. It's an amusing feature, although whether or not you'll find much replay value out of this is up to the viewer.