The Croods (2013)

In “The Croods,” Dreamworks’ sticks a Griswald-like family in the Stone Age, cave people still moping around with no fire and staring helpless as the land mass known as Pangaea breaks apart to form what we now recognize as Earth. (Try explaining this to your 4-year-old.) Plot: Ignorant dad (Nicolas Cage) is scared of all things new, while teen daughter Eep (Emma Stone) is ready to explore and push pop’s rules off a cliff. So, yes, it’s “Brave” B.C., with the inevitable scene where grumpy dad admits he’s wrong, and spunky kid is right. A genre staple as old as cave drawings, for sure. We’ll see it again. But even “Croods” cannot carry its story to the finish, switching midway from Eep’s perspective to the father’s. (It’s all so beware-climate-change liberal heavy-handed, even I blanched.) Much of the animation surprises, though: Prehistoric pets are imagined outside the box and will delight children and adults, and a gag involving early photography got this shutterbug laughing. The rest: Forgettable. C+