Goodbye, 68.

Rating: 10/10 (26 March 2011)

No one who has not lived through the oddly un-nuanced 70s and 80s can appreciate exactly how revolutionary "Madagscar" truly is. I realized when watching the film with young students how it clashes with the gospel of former decades, according to which nature is good and benevolent and peaceful, (i.e. not unlike communism), whereas civilization is bad and nauseatingly right-wing. And along comes "Madagascar". Four animals of wild species - a zebra, a lion, a hippo and a giraffe - escape from a New York Zoo, lured by the romanticized version of a free existence in nature, only to find that nature stinks, that freedom means trying to murder former friends, and, to top it all, the day is saved by some penguins who resemble the US Marines, or, at least, a well-oiled SWAT team. To drive home its point, "Madagscar" features a montage of wild-life animals attacking, killing and devouring each other, ironically underscored by Louis Armstrong's "It's a Wonderful World."
Nature is violent and relentless, or downright silly (the lemurs).
Goodbye, 68. Hello, reality.
Furthermore, the film is wonderfully funny all the way through.