The Croods

(PG) ★★★

Director: Kirk DeMicco, Chris Sanders.

Cast: (voices of) Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Clark Duke, Cloris Leachman.

Outside the cave - McDonald's restaurants, as far as the eye can see.

SCHOOL holidays are usually a time when you put away the learnin' books and break out the fun, which makes The Croods the perfect school holiday fare.

That's because despite being set in prehistoric times and focusing on a family of Neanderthals, you won't learn anything about life 100,000 years ago, but you may enjoy yourself.

This is the latest computer-animated feature from Dreamworks Animation, who have been on a winning streak of great family films lately (their last five films are Megamind, Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss In Boots, Madagascar 3, and Rise Of The Guardians).

The Croods is a weird blend of familiar ideas, where a Flintstones-like family goes on an Ice Age 4-type adventure through an Avatar-esque world. They are led by Grug (Cage), whose motto of "never not be afraid" has kept his family alive while secluded in a cave.

But the curiousity of his eldest daughter Eep (Stone), combined with a serious case of continental drift, means The Croods are about to discover there's a great big world outside the dark hole they call home. History gets replaced with fantasy in this version of prehistoric Earth, which is populated by turtlebirds, owl cats, piranhabirds, giant sabre-tooth kittens, mouse-aphants, and crocodogs. 

It's a weird world but it generates a sense of wonder via its lush animation. Equally fantastical is the movie's portrayal of its prehistoric humanoids. One minute, The Croods are presented as being like animals, the next they're discussing their feelings and emotions, and behaving like a thoroughly modern version of mankind.

Less uneven is the film's sense of humour and adventure. It barrels along at a solid pace, stopping appropriately for its emotional notes, but all the while embracing a bone-breaking level of slapstick.

Luckily these characters are seemingly impervious to all injuries and accidents, including falling from great heights and being crushed by giant rocks... repeatedly. This does take some of the sense of danger out of the film, but does provide some good laughs.

Nic Cage's distinctive delivery is slightly distracting, but there is humour to be had from Stone's Eep, love interest Guy (Reynolds) and his cute pet sloth called Belt, and the comic sidekick grandma (Leachman).

It's this knack for laughs and a rollicking good time that helps the film overcome its deficiencies, which also include a distractingly over-the-top score from Alan Silvestri.

Another plus is the strong characters, who cover up for the movie being too ludicrous in places. If only the film had been brave enough to go for the super-powerful, stick-in-the-memory ending that it flirts with instead of the silly way out it took, then we might have had something truly worthy on our hands. Instead, this is just uneven fun. Nothing more, nothing less.

Oz The Great & Powerful

This is a version of a review that aired on ABC Ballarat Breakfast on March 15, 2013.

(PG) ★★★

Director: Sam Raimi.

Cast: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Zach Braff, Joey King.

Hobart sure did look pretty this time of year.

A PREQUEL to The Wizard Of Oz? Who would be fool enough to try to emulate such a landmark piece of movie-making?

After all, such cinematic lightning has never struck twice for the many reimaginings of L Frank Baum's beloved story through the years. The dark 1985 sequel Return To Oz, the 1976 Aussie rock'n'roll version Oz, the 1978 African-American take The Wiz, The Muppets' Wizard Of Oz - the best any of these has achieved is a status as a cult favourite, and none of them have come close to reaching the lofty heights the 1939 classic.

This belated predecessor would like to think it's cut from the same cloth as the film that it's prequeling, but really this is more like Tim Burton's recent adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. It collects familiar tics and tricks from its source, tries to mould a solid story to some sketchy background information, and it does it all with an over-abundance of shiny computer-generated imagery.

In the context of what it's up against, what had come before, and what director Sam Raimi and scriptwriters David Lindsay-Abaire and Mitchell Kapner are trying to do, Oz The Great And Powerful is as good as it could be.

It tells the story of how a carnival magician named Oscar Diggs ended up in the magical land of Oz and ended up becoming its Wonderful Wizard.

In spite of the film's propensity to answer questions no one was asking (Why is the wicked witch wicked? Why does she fly on a broom? What's the deal with that wizard guy?), it's a solid-enough look at one man's journey to overcome his own caddishness and become a good man.

Standing between Oscar and the incalculable riches of the Emerald City are three witches (played by Kunis, Williams and Weisz), and the movie's main conceit is figuring out which one is good, which one is wicked, and which one is a homicidal maniac.

The familiarities are innocuous enough and mostly endearing - the black-and-white real world changing into the colour of Oz is done well, there is a selection of anthropomorphic creatures to join Oscar on his journey, there's a reference to a cowardly lion, and the tricks that the wizard would later hide behind are used as plot points.

Wisely, Oz The Great And Powerful is not a musical, and it makes a slightly predictable but still worthwhile joke about the fact.

It certainly looks a million dollars (or $200 million apparently) and most of the CGI is pretty good, even if it is over-the-top and filled with unnecessary detours as opposed to necessary details.

There are some decent family laughs in there and the characters are fleshed out reasonably well. Franco is good and gets strong support from the trio of witches, particularly Kunis and Weisz.

Overall the film is decent-enough. It was never going to be exceptional and it was going to be impossible for it to match the wonder of its 1939 follow-up. The story is too constrained by what comes next when Judy Garland's Dorothy arrives to be surprising or feel fresh, but Oz The Great And Powerful is adequate for a film that no one was asking for.