Last week I took Thomas to go see Madagascar. It was his first time seeing a first-run movie at the theater, and he was very excited about it. He greatly enjoyed the movie. I liked it as well, but there just wasn’t that much there for adult audiences.
Madagascar
Rating: 2.5/5
Madagascar is a fun movie, particularly for very young children, but there isn’t much there for older audiences.
Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller) is a star in the Central Park Zoo in New York City. Fed steak every night and performing for adoring crowds every day, he knows he’s got it good. His best friend is Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), who has just turned 10 and is starting to realize that something is missing from his life. When a crew of paramilitary penguins mistakenly burrows into his pen and announces their intention to escape to the wild, Marty realizes that freedom is what he’s been craving all along.
When Marty decides to take a day trip to Connecticut, his closest friends: Alex, Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) decide to try to track him down and bring him back before he jeopardizes their sweet setup in the zoo. Two or three improbable misadventures later, the four are washed ashore on the island of Madagascar. Marooned there with little hope of rescue, they experience culture shock adapting to the wild, the local lemur king (Sacha Baron Cohen, best known as his moronic alter ego “Ali G” on HBO) tries to enlist their assistance against the predatory foosa, and Alex wrestles with the reality of being a carnivore that has to hunt, kill and eat his own food.
Madagascar has animals, music, dancing and child-level humor that makes this movie pretty much a guaranteed hit for most young children. My four-year-old, Thomas certainly enjoyed it. There were attempts throughout the movie to inject enough adult humor to keep the older viewers entertained as well, in the style of every animated comedy since The Simpsons premiered, but the high level of plot predictability and the apparent focus on the youngest of moviegoers hampered this effort.
The voice acting is superb — easily the best feature of this movie. All of the voice actors do a very good job of injecting personality and humor into their characters. The CGI animation is also good, although not to the level that other recent movies have achieved.
The gold standard for CGI children’s movies has been Pixar ever since the original Toy Story, and that’s still the case. Finding Nemo and The Incredibles easily stand up to repeat viewing; I suspect Madagascar will not hold up quite as well. From the standpoint of writing, plot, and animation it’s just a touch below the Pixar bar in all respects.
If you have young children, I’d recommend seeing Madagascar with them. If you don’t, you might want to give it a pass.