Alright for kids

Rating: 4/10 (30 May 2005)

... but for adults? The animation might be 3-D, but the plot isn't. What starts out with an interesting premise of zoo animals being returned to the wild (which, if you're being picky, would result in the zebra and giraffe being eaten and the lion and hippo starving, but never mind) instantly grinds to a halt once the animals get there.
The animals move about the screen zappily enough, but the visual entertainment is not sufficient to keep discerning non-parent adults engaged. There are some funny jokes. (When the evil penguins arrive in Antarctica they gaze at the bleak landscape of their natural home. After a pause, one says: "Well, this sucks.") But older viewers will have to endure long unstimulating intervals for gags, which when they do arrive tend to be on a par with the cruder jokes in The Naked Gun series.
And while some characters - the monkeys and the penguins - are wittily constructed, the four leads are plain archetypes: vain lion, neurotic giraffe, hippo with "attitude" and aspirational zebra.
Frustratingly the film does raise two interesting issues only to gloss over them in the most facile way. When the animals are awaiting transportation to the wild, a news reporter comments that the move was brought about by pressure from animal rights groups who assumed that the animals wanted to escape captivity. Any debate on the ethics of keeping animals in zoos is then immediately dropped.
And when, at the climax of the film, the lion has to choose between his natural meat-eating instinct and his friendship with his prey, it is resolved by nothing more substantial than the lion feeling slightly sentimental.
The most irritating aspect, for me at least, was the endorsement of the popular quasi-vegetarian code of ethics whereby it is alright to kill and eat fish but not land-dwelling animals.
But perhaps I am being too demanding. The sheer excellence of Dreamworks SKG's better efforts (Shreks 1 and 2) and Pixar's jewels (Toy Stories 1 and 2, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc) and even Fox's predictable but entertaining Robots has raised standards in animation to vertiginous heights. Madagascar is an 86-minute diversion and nothing more.