Family friendly Anima’s latest film, CRANSTON ACADEMY: MONSTER ZONE can’t help put the political boot into American migration policy.

The Mexican company, specialising in 2D and CGI animation, isn’t particularly edgy, its social justice themes subtly placed rather than sledge hammered by woke cant.

Danny is a 15 year old boy genius surrounded by scholastic mediocrity in his hinterland high school. Unexpectedly, he is offered a scholarship to Cranston Academy, a most secret secondary school for the science and technology gifted.

The dux of the school is Liz, the daughter of a famous scientist from under whose shadow she is determined to emerge, shining in her own bright, light, a genius in her own right.

Together, they embark on restoring a reactor at Cranston that had been destroyed in the pre title sequence of the film. During the restoration, they inadvertently open a portal to another dimension unleashing threatening creatures.

With the help of a benevolent creature, one time Cranston engineer now morphed into a hybrid moth/man, and eventually aided by fellow students, Danny and Liz must calculate the best way to overcome these entities from the monster zone and save their school, and perhaps, even the world.

Writers Cal Brunker and Bob Barlen tick all the write(sic) boxes with the anti bullying, co-operative achievement, cultural inclusivity and gender equality vibe that runs through CRANSTON ACADEMY: MONSTER ZONE, and director Leopoldo Aguila and his talented band of artists and compositors present a picturesque palette of bold colours and grotesque images – airborne eyeballs, lethal lepidoptera and tenacious tentacles – that should delight and only slightly fright young viewers.

The voice work is excellent with Jamie Bell as Danny, Ruby Rose as Liz and Idzi Dutkiewicz as Mothman, an eccentric mustachioed Mexican insect hominid with a penchant for hot sauce, who has the best lines and a literal light touch.