Smart and funny

Rating: 8/10 (2 May 2006)

I loved 'Toy Story', but I must confess to having been less than enamoured of most of the computer-animated movies released in its wake, in spite of the acclaim that many of them have gathered. To me, 'A Bugs Life' and 'Antz' were not funny enough, and were further limited by having classical hero-centric narratives; 'Ice Age' had the same problems (and addition, a carelessly assembled plot); 'The Incredibles' was smarter but somewhat right-wing in its underlying ideology. But 'Madagascar' is wonderful, a cartoon full of razor-sharp humour, with just the right degree of self-awareness and a loopily inspired idea at its heart: a lovable New York lion has his instincts reawakened on returning to the wild, and discovers to his horror that he needs to eat his friends! There's a lot of great humour here in the 'Toy Story' vein, in that although there's a fantastical premise (based on anthropomorphised beings), given that premise, everything that follows makes perfect sense. To give away just one of the jokes that demonstrates how clever the script is, the animals (while still in the zoo) turn off the background jungle ambiance in order to get a good night's sleep; and as the birdsong fades, we hear instead the real background ambiance of the big city (i.e police sirens!) Maybe the script is even a little too witty for kids. For this big kid, however, it was a treat.