A silly forgettable plot, but one of the most endearing friendship of animation's history...

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2016)

Well, we get it from the characters' designs that "Madagascar" is no "Lion King" and from the casting of the voice actors: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith and Sacha Baron Cohen, that we'll be heading toward a 'jungle' version of "A Shark Tale": so many pop-culture references in the soundtrack that we'll lose the track, and the first minutes to play the distracting 'spot-that-star's voice' game.
Am I complaining? Not exactly: ever since the battle between Pixar and DreamWorks started with the face-to-face between "Antz" and "A Bug's Life", the rivalry allowed each team to fully express where they stood for on the field of imagination. Pixar made family friendly stories while DreamWorks was more focused on adult humor and references that even teenagers wouldn't necessarily get. On that level, "Madagascar" is pretty consistent with DreamWorks' tone, although it seems that this time, the enjoyment of children wasn't seen as a top priority at all.
I had the same complaint about "A Shark Tale", but I want to withdraw my judgment after "Madagascar". Now, this is movie totally made for adults and teenagers, with references to "New York, New York", to San Diego, to "American Beauty" during a feeding frenzy hallucinatory sequence and the ambiguous relationship between the two main characters, not to mention the identity crisis plot, only the penguins added the little touch of slapstick and fun the film needed for the little ones. So, I can't put exactly why I didn't enjoy the film as I thought I would, there's just something very confusing about it, and maybe the writing has something to do with it.
The opening starts with a fun little nod to "The Lion King" with Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) playing Tarzan with the sunrise in the background I was wondering where the creepers were hanging down from when he just woke up, his best friend Alex the Lion (which name did you expect? Leo?) wishes him a happy birthday. There have been friends in animated movies but I think I would put Marty and Alex in the Top 3, the two characters are co-leads and together they exchange advice, concerns and views about life like true bros would do. I liked that a lot, it was a genuinely appealing relationship. Now, Marty is 10, which in human years equals 38, he wishes he wouldn't spend the rest of his life in New York Central zoo, but Alex is more of a full-glass type of guy and tries to convince him to seize the day.
To complete the picture, there's a sensual and assertive female hippo (size helps) she's named Gloria and it's kind of ironic that she's voiced by the petite Jada Pickett Smith, and a hypochondriac whining giraffe named Melman, voiced by David Schwimmer, the size and the voice fits. Then you get a sort of bestial version of Friends with the zoo as Central Perk and if you still had doubt about these animals' humanity, you get the zebra walking in New York ("Staying Alive" in the background) and the three other animals who know exactly the directions to take in the subway. And if you still had doubts, there's the scene with Alex before he gets the dart, when a lion doesn't understand why he scare humans, that means he can't picture himself as a lion, he's a zoo attraction, he's a star, but not a wild animal, talk about some serious existential issues.
A chain of events involving boxes, a ship bound to Kenya and the gang of penguins with remarkable sailing abilities lead our four protagonists to a remote island in Africa. The roles are reversed, Marty is ecstatically surfing with dolphins and enjoying lif, Alex is devastated, put out of his zone of comfort, he's more desperate than any human in a desert island. At this point of the movie, nothing can ever match the comedic originality of the first act when the four animals ventured in the city, but there have been enough animals in the city movies so that the writers wouldn't get further than that. The problem is that there's no much of a plot happening after that, the whole story is about the identity crisis of Alex, and a weird group of lemurs (singing "I like to move it") and with Sacha Baron Cohen voicing the leader with an Indian accent.
The lemurs want Alex to scare their predators, the fossa, but Alex is totally disoriented and tries to repress the resurgence of his savage instincts. What can he do? This is where the film gets tricky, at many points; Marty catches Alex in awkward positions, mostly near his behind. Alex is hungry and starts seeing juicy steaks everywhere. Now, I hate to read gay subtexts everywhere but for the first time, I thought it was pretty obvious although not intended, the food thing is nothing, there's something going on between Alex and Marty. He loves him, he doesn't want to hurt him so he goes away and lives hidden for a short period.
There's no way the film could have gone further than that, except if it tried to be "Fritz the Cat" but the relationship between Alex and Marty was so complex and weird that it totally overshadowed the main plot, which was rather forgettable and whose solution was contrived to the limits of a plot hole. I mean, if you accept that in "Madagascar" universe, eating living animals is wrong, then the ending doesn't make sense. Maybe that fish was a talking one with Steve Carrel or Matthew Perry's voice, have the writers thought about that? The food was just an excuse to make a film about two complex guys (not animals) with a very 'friendship' (yeah, right) so I only accept "Madagascar" as an exposition, and I'm looking forward to seeing things evolve in the sequel.