Light enjoyable movie but you could wait to rent it

Rating: 4/10 (11 July 2005)

Madagascar follows the story of a pair of buddies in the NYC zoo, Alex, a lion (Ben Stiller) and Marty, a zebra (Chris Rock). Marty dreams of something more, while Alex is happy being the big attraction. When events take a turn for the worse, the two of them  along with a hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer) and a saucy hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith)  find themselves accidentally shipped to  you guessed it  Madagascar.
Though the movie largely concerns itself with the Alex/Marty buddy plot, the real humor is not in the main characters at all but in the goofy menagerie that inhabits the rest of the film. Chief among them are four semi-psychotic penguins who operate like a Navy Seals team; they're hysterical, goofy looking commandoes who can go "cute and cuddly" on command. Even funnier than them, however, is the oddball narcissist king of the lemurs, Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen  aka Ali G), who is so self-absorbed and so warped he steals every scene he's in.
Madagascar is okay. It's probably in the second run theaters by now, and that's a perfect place to see it. It's not bad, but the leads never really engage you; good thing the penguins and Julien are in it a fair amount. There are a few funny gags (one continuing one involving spitting out seawater actually gets funnier the more they do it), and overall the movie is light entertainment, but nothing more. Those curious could easily wait for the DVD.