An Embarrassment ... and not of Riches

Rating: 3/10 (31 May 2005)

Charlie Chaplin best described what was funny. "You take a woman walking down the sidewalk. Show the audience a banana peel in front of her. Everyone knows that she is going to step on the banana peel and do a pratfall. At the last instant, she sees the banana peel, steps over it and falls into an open manhole that neither she nor the audience knew was there."
Starting from that, if the movie makers of Madagascar were to handle that situation they would have the characters run up to the banana peel, stare at it, look at the audience, look up and down the road, run back and forth, look at the banana peel again, and slip on it four or five times and completely miss the open manhole. This movie is a very strange and often unpleasant mix of throwing poo and Tom Wolfe, being friends and being food, being clever and being unpleasant. If not for the penguins, I would have to give this movie only one or two stars. The audience who laughs at throwing poo is probably not going to know who Tom Wolfe is and the audience who knows who Tom Wolfe is will probably cringe at the idea of throwing poo.
Gawd! what were some of these reviewers thinking when they called it "Brilliantly written, animated and performed, it not only bridges the child-adult divide, but also makes its kid-friendly humor smart in its own way." -- Bruce Westbrook, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
I much more agree with: "The movie is like a doughnut, with frosting on the edges and a big hole in the middle." Arizona Republic