Goofy and wonderful! Hilarious for adults!

Rating: 10/10 (12 November 2008)

After seeing everything else at our rather slow moving and small multi-plex, I steeled myself for a dreadful 90 minutes in a cutsie-dootsie kiddies movie. Wrong! Despite the presence of two dozen toddlers in the auditorium (with their families, obviously), this was HILARIOUS! It was as adult, and bright, and funny, as any of the Shrek movies. Maybe Chris Rock playing a herd of zebras in this reminded me of Eddie Murphy in the Shreks (?). Truthfully, Madagascar 3 was that good.
I suppose one doesn't have to be a genius to write one-liners and story lines that operate on two levels--- the kids' level, and the parents who brought them to the show. But maybe these writers are geniuses, I don't know. They certainly wrote some surprisingly sharp, witty, and adult jokes for the grown up portion of the audience. I have no idea what the toddlers experienced--- but in the time my showing was on, I never heard any crying, squawking, nor running up and down the aisles. Over the course of the 100-odd minutes (with trailers and whatnot) there were 5 or 6 dashes to the loo by a parent carrying or leading some youngster. Otherwise, no disturnbaces at all. The little ones seemed content.
All of us in the audience roared with laughter OFTEN. That was both a surprise, as I said, and of course a delight.