“I think ‘The Croods’ has elements of all of all of my favourite movies, which is that it’s not just funny and it’s not just heartbreaking, it takes you on a journey throughout the entire film. I cried watching it (laughs), and I laughed, and I just went along for the ride and enjoyed myself the entire time. Throughout recording it you come in and you’re doing different things on different days, and then when you see how everything plays out in the end you realise that the messages – which there are many in the film – stick with you after the fact, but you’re not sitting there watching it thinking about the “themes”, you’re sitting there enjoying this family. I loved that. It’s different than any other animated movie that I’ve seen, in a sense that it feels so true to life the whole entire time – even though we are in the Stone Age (laughs).”

Stone voices Eep, the families rebellious teenager who’s trying to drag her family kicking and screaming into the future. Her nagging feeling that there might be more to life outside the family cave is confirmed when the Croods embark on their journey.

The “Gangster Squad” actress was surprised by the voice work, comparing the experience to ADR work on regular films.

“…I first went in, I’d done a lot of ADR work on my movies like ‘Easy A,’ movies with narration, so I thought it was going to be like that – I’ll just read my lines and play the character in that way. Then I realised, as time went on, that there was so much physicality involved – you really are playing an animated character. And that was the most ideal situation ever, because I come from improv and sketch comedy, I always want to go bigger and bigger and bigger. And with something like ‘The Croods,’ or a character like Eep, you can’t go “too big”. So being able to run and jump and climb, all of the physicality that comes with playing an animated character, I didn’t realise at the beginning that I would get to experience that. It really is just like playing another character, it’s not like ADR at all. It was such a blast.”

Eep appears to be real personal for Stone.

“Eep is the eldest daughter of the Croods and her personality is that she doesn’t want to be stuck in this cave any more, she really really wants to follow the sun. She loves the light, and her family hate the dark. And with Eep, I think she’s less scared of the dark than she is of not following the light. So she sees fire one night, not knowing what it is, thinking it’s a tiny sun, and she chases it. And ‘The Croods,’ it’s about living and not just surviving, that’s sort of Eep’s ethos, and I love that.”