Home is where the heart is in Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders’s energetic romp about a family of cavemen and women who embark on a perilous quest to find a new settlement.

Initially touted as a stop-motion project for Bristol-based Aardman Animations, The Croods suffered numerous delays in production and arrives on the big screen bearing many similarities to computer-animated films of yesteryear.

The prehistoric setting and saccharine father-daughter bonding are strikingly reminiscent of Ice Age 4: Continental Drift, while the rebellious flame-haired heroine shares many tomboy qualities with Pixar’s wee Highland lassie Brave.

Familiarities aside, De Micco and Sanders’s film bursts with vibrant colour, especially in eye-popping 3D, punctuated by lively action set pieces, including a hunting sequence that draws in several otherworldly species.

A cuddly sloth called Belt provides comic relief amid the emotional syrup and the underlying message about chasing your dreams, regardless of how ridiculous they sound to other people, is hammered home with all the subtlety of a caveman’s club to the cranium.

Grug Crood (voiced by Nicolas Cage) has taught his family to be afraid of the dark and new experiences.

He protects his wife Ugga (Catherine Keener), restless daughter Eep (Emma Stone), oafish son Thug (Clark Duke), feral baby daughter Sandy and decrepit mother (Cloris Leachman) by ushering them into a cave, where they will be safe from the prehistoric creatures that roam the land.

Soon after, the Croods’ cave is destroyed by a massive earthquake that heralds the disintegration of the landmass into continents.

The Croods join Guy and his pet sloth Belt on the expedition through uncharted territory in search of a new place to call home.