In No way is this movie better than the first one

Rating: 1/10 (15 March 2012)

I did like the first Madagascar film and I was expecting to like the sequel just as much, because animated sequels to kid's movies might not be as good as the original, they're never bad. Accept for this one.
Everything that works in Madagascar does not work in Escape 2 Africa, starting with
1. THE WAY THE STORY GETS SET UP. I know it is a kids movie but I can't believe that penguins and lemurs were able to rebuild a damaged 1940s-ish airplane that was stuck in a tree and get it air worthy. King Julien and gang enter the plane solely because kids liked them in the original. Even though none of them do anything the entire movie!
2. THE JOKES. This movie had exactly the same problem that Men in Black II did with Frank the pug and the worm guys where I have to ask "Why are these one time joke characters from the first movie doing in this movie? There is no reason besides kids liked them in the first movie!" That is exactly what I said about the old lady, the penguins and the lemurs! And in Men in Black II at least I was enjoying myself when the worm guys and Frank were on screen. These characters are stupid, the jokes are not funny and they get so much screen time that it becomes annoying and painful.
3. THE "PLOT". This movie is animals sitting around and doing nothing for the entire film. In Madagascar the best part of the writing was how the four main characters interacted with each other. In Escape 2 Africa then spend the entire film doing their own thing showing how boring these characters are when they are by themselves. This movie try's to be a parody of The Lion King and it's not a very good one. If you remove the everyone sitting around and doing nothing plot from the lion king you would still have a great movie, because you would have great music, great animation and great scenes. If you remove the everyone sitting around and doing nothing plot from Escape 2 Africa, you would have nothing. Which is what this movie left me with.