DreamWorks animation finally hits its stride with “Madagascar,” a zippy and funny improvement over its “Shrek” movies and last year’s overcooked “Shark Tale.”
| Fun for all: A zippy and funny DreamWorks cartoon about four escaped zoo animals who must fend for themselves in the wild. It has good jokes, good slapstick and one uproarious lemur king.
Rated: PG rating is for subject matter. Now showing: tk |
It begins far from Madagascar, in the close quarters of the Central Park Zoo. A zebra named Marty (voice by Chris Rock) is restless – what’s out there in the world outside? What’s out there in “the wild”?
His best friend, a lion named Alex (Ben Stiller), has no such curiosity – he’s thoroughly, well, lionized at the zoo, and the fresh steaks every day have made him forget that a zebra is his natural prey.
Nevertheless, these two pals, plus Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer), find themselves on a ship headed for Africa, their ancestral stomping grounds. When their crates are lost overboard, they wash up ashore on an island, although at first they suspect it might be the San Diego Zoo.
From there, the story escalates, as our domesticated heroes confront the realities of life in the wild. And the uncomfortable subject of instinct.
They also discover a population of lemurs, as we meet Julien, the lemur king, one of the funniest characters in recent memory. He’s given voice by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (known over here for his dimwitted Ali G character), and Cohen and the animators create an uproariously clueless monkey potentate.
Also good are a quartet of sneaky penguins who slide in and out of the picture – the leader of whom sounds, for no apparent reason, like Robert Stack in “The Untouchables.” (It’s actually co-director Tom McGrath.) Here’s hoping these penguins get their own movie, or at least a Saturday-morning TV series.
I also wanted more from two zoo chimpanzees – one silent, one erudite and pretentious. Both agree, however, on the advantages of throwing poo at people.
Directors McGrath and Eric Darnell (“Antz”) keep the movie flying, always managing to toss in some unexpected gag, from the lethal granny at Grand Central Station to the “acid trip” resulting from a tranquilizer dart.
DreamWorks is in love with pop-culture references, but thankfully there are fewer of them here than in “A Shark Tale,” and the ones here are actually funny. Or maybe I’m always going to be a sucker for a “Planet of the Apes” joke.
The movie passes the two-tier test for kiddie films: Kids will love the slapstick and the songs, and their parents can actually enjoy the jokes.
For the first time, Disney and Pixar have to look over their shoulder. And I hope what they see next is a DreamWorks cartoon about crafty penguins and pipe-smoking monkeys.
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