'The Croods' explores prehistoric parent-children relationship

The Croods don't have much time for fun. The close-knit family of prehistoric cavemen, whose story is told in the charming, big-screen family cartoon The Croods, spend every waking hour chasing after food while trying to avoid becoming lunch themselves.

Once darkness descends, they hide in their cave.

"Never not be afraid," patriarch Grug Crood (voiced by Nicolas Cage) constantly tells his family.

"Anything new is bad!"

Made by DreamWorks Animation with a rumored budget of $150 million, The Croods opens Friday.

Grug, whose name pretty much sums up his persona - gruff, strong, overprotective, and not exactly a genius - isn't very different from the typical working dad or mom, said the film's writing-directing team, Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco.

"The theme of change, of being afraid to change, was a big one for us," DeMicco said in a recent interview. Like us, the Crood family is constantly beset by powerful forces it can't control.

We have a rapidly morphing, volatile market. They face massive tectonic and climate changes that are tearing apart and reshaping their world.

"The idea is that they are trying to struggle in a world that literally is changing beneath their feet," said DeMicco, a former journalist and screenwriter whose directing credits include the 2008 animated comedy Space Chimps.

A dazzling effort in 3D digital animation, The Croods features the voices of Catherine Keener as Grug's wife, Ugga; Cloris Leachman as her bossy, eternally cranky mother, Gran; and Emma Stone as Grug and Ugga's rebellious teen daughter, Eep, who can't abide by her father's overprotective, cautious approach to life.

It's Eep who introduces the family to a new way of life when she brings home a most exotic creature - a more evolved human named Guy (Ryan Reynolds), who has the knowledge to make fire and use tools, including shoes and sunglasses. When a geological shift destroys the Croods' cave, Guy leads them away to a place he says will be safe - and always sunny.

The road trip (history's first family vacation?) brings the group in contact with more new things than Grug can handle and more dangers than he could have anticipated.

Grug is no dummy, said Sanders, 51, a two-time Academy Award nominee best known for cocreating Lilo & Stich and DreamWorks' megahit How to Train Your Dragon. "A lot of his fears are real, and we wanted to create sympathy for his overly paranoid attitude."

To get us in Grug's frame of mind, the filmmakers populate their world with strange creatures you're not likely to see in any natural history museum.

"We invented our own time period," DeMicco said. "We're showing these cavemen setting off into a new world, and we wanted the audience to have that similar experience, to see things for the first time."

Sanders said the creative team went through a long process to invent the creatures. "At first, we started by giving everything spikes, tusks, and sabertooths," he said. "I mean, we had sabertooth squirrels."

Eventually, they decided to make every creature a cross between two or more animals, including a spectacular flock of pink macaws with piranha teeth.

The exception is Guy's pet, Belt, a sloth that wraps around Guy's waist and holds up his trousers.

Voiced by Sanders himself, Belt makes for a hilarious Greek chorus, providing the audience with a wry running commentary on the characters and their predicament.

He has a high time mocking Grug's dissenting grunts and complaints.

DeMicco, who welcomed twins (a boy and a girl) last month, said that despite their many conflicts, Grug and Eep grow closer during their journey.

"In a lot of movies, the dad's role is only to stand in the teenager's way, so then the teen would go away and have an adventure," he said. "We wanted to show Grug and his daughter grow and change together."

Eep, he added, isn't just a run-of-the-mill rebellious girl. "She had a yearning; she wasn't being rebellious for its own sake," DeMicco said. "She wanted to find a better life."

Sanders, who has a 7-year-old daughter, said he hoped the film draws parents and children closer together.

"We've had a couple of really memorable and moving experiences with people at screenings," he said. "Parents told us the movie helped them understand their kids better and kids said they appreciated their parents better.

"And that's the thing that we would love people to take away from the movie."