Should have been a five minute short about the penguins

Rating: 4/10 (30 May 2005)

The most interesting characters/storyline in the movie are the penguins. They should have stuck with them. The rest of the movie is a snoozer - except for the few scenes when the Sasha Baron Cohen as King of the Lemurs shows up and saves the cinematic day. He manages to take a dumb story and make it at least amusing. (I'm guessing, though, that most of the funny bits in those scenes were probably from his ad-libs. ) The story is not very strong or clear, there are plot points that don't make any sense, and moments of incredible suspension of disbelief. Okay, I know it's animated, but it should at least follow the laws of physics as they relate to animals in wooden crates floating on the high seas. They would SINK. But enough about good IL' logic. That's MY pet peeve. The dialogue is awful, the music is distracting, obvious and TERRIBLE, and the performances of the four "leads" are downright boring. It gets four out of ten stars for Cohen and the penguins.