Second Madagascar an Funny Return
There weren’t many of us, but I was one of the few critics who actually got a kick out of the 2005 DreamWorks animated comedy Madagascar. It was freewheeling and fun, and even if the whole thing played more like series of Looney Tunes or Max Fleischer style skits than it did a feature length family-friendly motion picture it made me laugh start to finish and that was more than good enough for me.
Marty (Chris Rock), Alex (Ben Stiller), Melman (David Schwimmer) and Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) are back in DreamWorks' Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
That didn’t mean I didn’t notice the lack of plot or characterizations, or that I didn’t pay attention to the fact the whole thing was as thinly constructed as a Swedish Pancake. I saw those things just like everyone else did, I just admittedly chose to somewhat ignore them, the fact the film tickled my funny bone so thoroughly more than reason enough to give the darn thing a gently winking pass.
After watching Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, however, I know sort of wish I’d come done on the first one a bit harder than I even remotely did. Not because I still wouldn’t want to give it a friendly recommendation, I haven’t come close to changing my mind on that front, but more because this new sequel is such a four-square improvement over its predecessor the fact I’m going to give it essentially the same three-star review is kind of anticlimactic.
Be that as it may, the majority of the problem spots found in the first film have been more than improved upon by filmmakers Tom McGrath and Eric Darnell, co-writing with Tropic Thunder scribe Etan Cohen, this second time around. They’ve taken their energetically invigorating group of characters, former New York Central Park Zoo animals Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer), and taken them to an entirely new level. They have fleshed them out and made them three-dimensional, the comedy this time coming right out of each of their inherent personalities then it is composed willy-nilly just for the sake of a few random chuckles.
This is done by cementing the absurdity of the situation (the four friends find themselves stranded in Africa after the plane constructed by a returning group of conniving penguins crash-lands in an African nature preserve) in a somewhat realistically poignant milieu. While they wait for their feathered friends to rebuild their transportation, Alex is reunited with his parents (Bernie Mac, Sherri Shepherd) after years of being presumed dead effectively giving the film an emotional hook it didn’t have the first time around.
This clash of cultures (Dad’s the dangerous – if fair – alpha lion head of the savannah, his son is a wisecracking show-off fond of his own self importance who could barely hurt a fly let alone another jungle critter) is what gives the sequel its zest. Stiller and Mac (who sadly died before he could see the finished film) work off on another beautifully, and while their inability to understand one another just explodes with comedy it’s nicely juxtaposed by the bonds of familial love both animals form during this reuniting.
Don’t get me wrong. This sequel is still plenty silly. Those pesky penguins kept making me laugh even though I knew I should be tired of them by now, while Sacha Baron Cohen almost steals the entire picture as the politically incorrect nut-job King Julian the Lemur. Marty gets some cute bits with a whole herd of doppelganger zebras, while Melman is a downright riot after his fellow giraffe label him their witch doctor urging the giraffe to help heal all their hypochondriacally driven injuries.
The film doesn’t quite rise to the level of DreamWorks’ Kung fu Panda from earlier this summer, and it has plenty of bumpy stretches (especially when it focuses upon a group of lost New Yorkers living their own personal Swiss Family Robinson) that don’t work in the slightest. Overall, though, this is one funny movie. More than that, it’s also a surprisingly effective character-driven one, all four of the central protagonists becoming richer and more engaging as the plot progresses.
All of which makes the movie a worthwhile effort and better picture than its predecessor. I had a blast watching it, as did every single one of the kids in the audience sitting there with me. Ozzy Osbourne once asked all of us to, “party with the animals,” in the lyrics to one of his songs. In the case of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, I can’t think of anything better to say than that.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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