rating:
(out of
4 stars)United States; 2005
Directed by Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath; produced by Mireille Soria; written by Mark Burton, Billy Frolick, Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath
Starring (the voices of) Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
'Madagascar' is a nice animated feature film, but nice is not enough
anymore. We are spoiled with films like 'Shrek', 'Shrek 2', 'Finding Nemo'
and 'The Incredibles' and therefore this one feels a little like a
disappointment. I enjoyed most of it but had a constant feeling that it
could have been a lot better.
The story begins in the New York Zoo where we meet Marty the zebra (voiced
by Chris Rock), his best friend Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Melman the
giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith). Some
penguins want to escape from the zoo and Marty likes that idea. He wants to
go to the wild. A lot of things happen and then the four end up on the
island of Madagascar where they meet a lot of lemurs including King Julian
(Sacha Baron Cohen) and Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer). Here Alex slowly
develops his predator skills and that might be a problem for Marty since he
is after all a zebra.
Before the four are on the island you can say there is a story with the
occasional laughs and a lot of smiles. But once they are there the film does
not know what direction to take. The story sort of pauses to give us laughs
created by King Julian and his lemurs only to fill the time with amusing
moments. That it partly succeeds can not hide the fact that we are watching
a couple of funny sketches instead of a complete story.
The animation itself is nice too, but not good enough to lift this film to
higher levels. The same we can say for the voices. I liked David Schwimmer
and Sacha Baron Cohen but just their voices made me think of Schwimmer's
Ross from 'Friends' and Cohen's Ali G. Ben Stiller was just Ben Stiller and
that zebra talked a lot, like Chris Rock does. This is not so much a
complaint, as it is one of the examples that shows why 'Madagascar' is not
more than average.