Ultimately, however, it's the weak direction and screenwriting that doom this film to nothing but a time filler for the very youngest of children.

It's a little insulting to us to assume Berlinale critics are all too tired to notice what you've picked up on. I joined the festival only a couple of days before, and I adored the film. It could be, in fact, that because it doesn't match your ideal (a caveman film set in the real world, for whatever reason) you were just unwilling to go with it. But even before the story's catalyst – Guy's arrival – it lays its cards out with the flora and fauna it presents. Your argument essentially distils to 'film isn't different film,' which is a problem for you and not The Croods.

I shan't argue that everyone else disagreeing with you is proof that you must be wrong – consensus criticism is the death of the art-form, even if you're willing to write off all those others' responses as by-products of fatigue – but I do suspect there's a snobbishness that comes with the company logo at the start of these sorts of films. Because Dreamworks has proven, with its recent output, that it has mastered the broad-strokes basics of films like these in a way Pixar seems to have lost. And yet some critics continue to praise Pixar's cynically-driven recent output as though it's the only word in animation. The Up comparison in your piece is telling in that regard, since the only common ground between the two is their animated approach. I'm making assumptions here, I know, but I do wonder, if you'd swapped the badges (but nothing else) on the last couple of years' output from both studios, whether responses like this would be so determinedly negative.