A Blitzkrieg of Colorful Images and One-Liners Covers a Soft-Centered Core

Rating: 5/10 (12 December 2005)

I was not that interested in seeing this latest animated DreamWorks concoction until I saw an 11-minute short, "A Christmas Caper" just before the wondrous Wallace and Gromit feature, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit". In expertly rendered computer animation, it starred four physically adroit penguins who not coincidentally steal the feature-length film from which they originate. At 86 minutes, "Madagascar" has several entertaining scenes, brightly colored images and a kinetic pace that doesn't flag, but somehow the film falls short of the Pixar features to which the creators seem to aspire. A lot of it has to do with co-directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath trying too hard and co-screenwriters Mark Burton and Billy Frolick cramming a lot of story within its comparatively brief running time. They provide some sharp lines and winking references to other movies, but the movie lacks an ironic punch that would have made it truly memorable.
The plot focuses on two animals, best friends in spite of their different species - a curiously dissatisfied zebra named Marty, who dreams of what life must be like outside his admittedly comfortable digs at the Central Park Zoo in New York, and an egocentric lion named Alex, who enjoys the limelight at the zoo but comes to terms with his natural tendencies amid the wilds of the jungle. It is both a blessing and a curse to have Chris Rock and Ben Stiller provide the voices for Marty and Alex respectively. While they provide some expectedly funny moments, their motor-mouthed presence makes the film pretty exhausting to sit through without fidgeting, especially as Rock seems to be imitating Eddie Murphy's Donkey in the "Shrek" series. Neither seems to be directed to develop characters but rather magnify their personalities. Faring marginally better on the sidelines are Jada Pinkett-Smith as Gloria, the no-nonsense hippopotamus, and David Schwimmer in Ross Geller overdrive as Melman, the hypochondriac giraffe.
Once the setting moves to the Rousseau-like tableaux of Madagascar, the movie improves considerably with the addition of comical lemurs in thrall of the crate-wrecked visitors - Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Ali G, plays the hilariously despotic King Julien XIII with a heavy dollop of Indian curry, Cedric the Entertainer is the put-upon Maurice and Andy Richter makes the saucer-eyed Mort sound like the first cousin of a Spielberg gremlin. There is even a nod to the actual "Born Free" movie not only in the use of the theme song in the opening but in a relatively somber sequence that has Alex coming back to his natural tendencies among the feared fossas to the increasing fear of his lifelong friends. But the movie's brightest spots are provided by the four penguins (voiced by members of the crew) and two erudite monkeys who are used mostly as transitional cues in the story.
The DVD has a fairly standard set of extras, though I liked the alternate audio commentary track provided by the penguins. The deleted scenes, "Mad Mishaps", are fairly incompressible for their deletion other than the fact that they aren't in finished form, and "The Tech of Madagascar" is quite dry as is usual for seeing the mechanics behind computer animation. For the kids, there is the video for the inescapable "I Like to Move It, Move It" song by the lemurs and video games galore, as well as "Enchanted Island", a genuine educational featurette on the real Madagascar.