Talk about "Madagascar" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Plot Summary
Madagascar is a lively story about a Zebra, a Lion, a Giraffe and a Hippopotamus who find themselves quite out of their habitats when they wind up in the wild. These animals spent most of their lives living and working in the Central Park Zoo in New York City. However, Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock) was not satisfied with the pampered zoo life. He wanted nothing more than to roam free. After hearing things from the penguins at the zoo (Tom McGrath, Christopher Knights, and Chris Miller) who were constantly plotting escape to Antarctica, Marty got the idea to run away to the wild.
Marty's faithful friends Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the Hippopotamus (Jada Pinkett Smith), ventured into New York to find Marty and bring him home to the zoo. All the animals were captured in Grand Central Station, and as a repercussion of what the humans perceived as the animals' attempt to escape, they ended up in the wild on Madagascar.
Review
In the beginning of this film, I figured it would be one that would take a bit of time to get going. A lot of things happened before the animals got to Madagascar, and there was a lot of setup for a story that proved to be very small and simple. Once they arrived on Madagascar, however, things still didn't pick up. There was a lot of almost empty time in this movie where barely anything happened. The plot wasn't particularly engaging, and the whole thing was kind-of pointless.
With all that dead space, the only thing to fill it with was jokes, and I was also disappointed by that. The jokes were either slapstick-style, or related to the characters' personal antics (Melman needed constant care because he was always ill), which quickly got old. The film used the same jokes over and over again, and eventually the slapstick wasn't even remotely funny anymore, and the characters began to get on my nerves.
The entire character of Marty seemed like a Donkey knock-off. Donkey from Shrek was immediately a big hit with parents and children alike, and Marty seemed to be trying too hard to be like Donkey and to have that popularity and lovability amongst viewers. The truth of it is that Chris Rock just wasn't as funny or entertaining as Marty as Eddie Murphy was as Donkey, and that's why this persona didn't really work for Marty.
The voices of the characters were very well done, and the characters personalities were well developed, but this film was still lacking. With such a good cast of people to play the voices, this film could have turned out better, but though the cast was an interesting selection of good actors and actresses, the film itself was not so interesting.
Conclusion
This movie was no more than can be expected by the trailer. Granted, the target audience is children, but the creators could have had a bit of a heart and put in a bit of subtle humor for the parents who are undeniably going to accompany their children to this film. What really got me was the fact that everything was slapstick, anything that was supposed to be funny was someone falling or getting hit with something or any other variety of my least favorite kind of humor. I did find comfort in the penguins though, because they were the one funny aspect of the film. Otherwise, the jokes that were barely funny in the first place got tired after being recycled over and over and that the writers could have been a bit more creative and could have given the film a bit more entertainment value.
The kids in the theatre around me seemed mildly entertained by this film, so perhaps it would be good to take your children to. This is definitely an appropriate film for kids, though there is one point in time when it says "HELL" in big letters across the screen for a brief moment, I doubt most children noticed, though I heard a mother gasp behind me. I imagine that kids would enjoy this film much more than I did, and it certainly won't be hard for them to understand anything that's going on.
