Madagascar

Madagascar is a 2005 American computer-animated survival comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and PDI/DreamWorks and distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. The film was directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath (in McGrath's feature directorial debut) and written by Darnell, McGrath, Mark Burton, and Billy Frolick. The film stars the voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, and Andy Richter. It centers around a group of animals from the Central Park Zoo who find themselves stranded on the island of Madagascar.
== Cast ==
* Ben Stiller as Alex, a lion. Tom McGrath explained that "Ben Stiller was the first actor we asked to perform, and we knew we wanted his character, Alex, to be a big performing lion with a vulnerable side."
* Chris Rock as Marty, a plains zebra. McGrath explained the character: "Marty is a guy who thinks there might be more to life than what's in the zoo. We wanted his character to be energetic, so we listened to Chris Rock."
* David Schwimmer as Melman, a hypochondriac reticulated giraffe who is afraid of germs. When they were looking for a voice actor for Melman, they listened to Schwimmer's voice on Friends and, according to McGrath, thought that it "sounded really neat". During development, Melman the Giraffe was originally supposed to be an okapi but was changed to a giraffe.
* Jada Pinkett Smith as Gloria, a strong, confident, sweet hippopotamus. McGrath said that they found all these traits in Pinkett Smith's voice when they listened to her.
* Sacha Baron Cohen as King Julien XIII, a ring-tailed lemur and the king of the lemurs. King Julien was initially only meant to be a "two-line" character until auditioning Baron Cohen improvised eight minutes of dialogue in an Indian accent.
* Cedric the Entertainer as Maurice, an aye-aye and King Julien's royal advisor and best friend (to whom Julien never listens).
* Andy Richter as Mort, a Goodman's mouse lemur who is King Julien and Maurice's best friend.
* Tom McGrath as Skipper, the leader of the penguins. McGrath, who was also the film's co-director and co-writer, initially only lent his voice to the temporary tracks. Growing up with films starring tough actors like John Wayne, Charlton Heston, and Robert Stack, it was the latter of whom McGrath wanted for the voice of Skipper. Stack was approached about voicing the character, but died two weeks before production on the animation began. After that, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg decided to keep the temporary voice, with McGrath explaining: "People were used to me doing that voice. We knew it worked when we screened it." Many of the character's traits were based on Stack's work. McGrath especially emphasized The Untouchables, a 1959 television crime drama series starring Stack.
* Chris Miller as Kowalski, a penguin and Skipper's right hand.
* Jeffrey Katzenberg as Rico, a smart and silent penguin who is only expressed through grunts and squeals. Mireille Soria, the film's producer, commented on Katzenberg's uncredited role: "The irony for us is that he's the one who doesn't talk. There's something very Dadaistic about that, isn't there?"
* Christopher Knights as Private, an eager, lowly penguin. Knights was also an assistant editor on the film.
* Conrad Vernon as Mason, a chimpanzee (Phil, the other chimpanzee, is unvoiced, communicating to Mason via Sign Language. Despite this, Phil is the one who can read whereas Mason cannot.)
Category:Films
Category:DreamWorks Animation
Category:Universal Pictures films
Category:Animated films
Category:Comedy films