Needs more penguins

Rating: 6/10 (5 January 2006)

Cute, but slow. The interesting characters were the penguins and Julien the Lemur King. The main premise just wasn't that interesting. Picking Ben Stiller as a lead voice was a bad move. He's just not that funny as a voice. Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen really come across as voice-overs, but the others not so much so. I think that Cedric the Entertainer was wasted on a minor part. He should have been the lion.
The three penguins stole the movie. I kept wishing for more songs with that East Indian Lemur funk and MORE penguins. They should have their own film as a sequel/spin off.
The digital animation was quite good, but the screenplay and the gags weren't on the level of "Toy Story" or other Pixar films. It was trying to be "Finding Nemo", but didn't make it. The key to Nemo was its characters.