Not bad

Rating: 6/10 (28 May 2005)

Issue a warrant for the arrest of Sacha Baron Cohen. The charge? Grand Theft Movie. As Julian the Lemur King, he totally steals the show from the alleged star power headlining "Madagascar". This is one of the few movies I want to see sequel to, so long as it's exploring the personality of King Julian and his cronies.
The story is somewhat interesting, although the main characters are mostly swept along in the situation rather than creating it. The responses are somewhat obvious, but not quite enough to make you groan. The humor is rarely rises above a good snicker. The biggest jokes are TV references that go over the heads of the kids. I like a good anachronism as much as the next guy, but it wears thin pretty quickly.
The ultimate conflict arises when one of the star animals has to deny his basic animal nature so as not to upset his anthropomorphic relationship with his animal friends who happen to be of different species.
I'm going to seriously over-intellectualize a kiddie movie here, but I find that treatment hard to follow. I don't have a problem with Sylvester and Tweety, because Sylvester is never asked to be anything but a sentient cat, and he's always fully a cat when he's around people. I can deal with Animal Farm because the animals are really humans in animal suits, and they're always that way. But I have trouble staying in the fantasy when the creator can't quite decide which way he wants to play it. Sentient, speaking animals sometimes behave in a civilized manner, but you can never tell when they are going lapse into being animals again.