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Cavemen get a bad rap. While they are always and forever perceived as lumbering oafs dragging clubs at their heels, they were the ones who first painted on cave walls, they hunted and gathered with precision, and they survived far longer than you or I would in their shoes. In Dreamworks’ new animated feature “The Croods,” a clan of Neanderthals differ from a modern family only in their sloping foreheads and enlarged knuckle joints. They survive by staying in their cave and following the rules — but when their home is destroyed and they are forced past the boundaries of those rules, they find a world they never knew lay just outside their rock.

Eep (Emma Stone) is your average teenage cavewoman — rebellious, discontent and always yearning for the undiscovered to find her. This orientation fits poorly within the perimeters of her father Grug’s (Nicolas Cage) set of rules for survival, which are simply to be afraid of everything and never indulge in curiosity. For years, Grug’s paranoia and cautiousness have kept their family of six alive and well amid dozens of bloodthirsty beasts waiting on the other side of their cave door. But when a stranger named Guy (Ryan Reynolds) arrives with wild notions of the world ending and the idea of “pants,” the family Crood are compelled to leave the safety of their calculated cave-life and enter a beautiful and dangerous new world on their way to a better home.

CROODS PACKED WITH HUMOR AND STUNNING VISUALS

“The Croods” works because it didn’t play off “The Far Side” caveman dimension as I had expected, with jokes that consistently poked fun at their primitivity. Instead, the film used the outrageousness of the characters’ Pleistocene surroundings as a catalyst for beautiful scenery, action-packed set pieces and creatures you could think up only in your dreams. The animation is absolutely breathtaking, from the fluidity of the characters’ faces to the extensive palettes of exotic jungle. It’s always a good idea for humor to be complemented by striking visuals in a cartoon, especially in this day-and-age when the genre seems to be greatly progressed with every new release.

SOLID CAST MAKES FOR GREAT VOICEOVERS

The voice talent in “The Croods,” while a noticeably strange ensemble cast, really delivers. Cage makes Grug a lovable brute, and the animated caveman may be his best and most compelling character in recent years — which is sad. Stone is perfect as the exasperated and adventurous Eep, and while the film’s focus doesn’t stay as central on her as it should have, she was a spunky heroine who I’m sure little girls everywhere will walk out of the theater wanting to be.

The rest of the family is voiced by the likes of Catherine Keener, Clarke Duke and Cloris Leachman. Everyone always raves about Betty White, but Leachman is an elderly talent who could raise a laugh from anyone with a funny bone; even as a cartoon, her feisty “Gran” had me in stitches. And Ryan Reynolds voices Guy with a hilarious charisma that combines suave with spaz in a great way. All of the characters were likable here, and that is rare in a season when animated movies seem to think the more annoying a character, the better. I’m looking at you, “Lorax.”

DREAMWORKS POSSIBLY BEATS PIXAR IN CREATIVITY

Pixar would do well to take a leaf out of Dreamworks’ book, and I never thought I would say that. The imagination at Pixar seems to be diminishing — notice all of the sequels? — while Dreamworks has produced several extremely original animated films over the last few years. “The Croods” is not the least of those. This movie is fun, fast-paced and very pleasing to the eye, not to mention both the screenplay and the voices that read it are hysterically on-point and relevant to an intelligent audience. There was not much to dislike about “The Croods,” though the ending may drag out a bit, even for a movie that only reached 98 minutes. I’d recommend it to anyone seeking some slapstick caveman laughs while also experiencing a beautiful composition of prehistoric scenery — not to mention you get to hear Nic Cage’s lunacy without looking into those crazy eyes.