Film Review: Madagascar

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect of Madagascar. I saw the trailer a while back - an animated film about animals in the Central Park Zoo escaping - and thought, "Hmm. That will either be really cute or it will really suck". Fortunately, as it turns out, it wasn't a bad movie. Not as good as Shrek, maybe, or even Finding Nemo, but not nearly as bad as, say, sitting through a showing of Platform. Part of my prejudice against the film going in was the stars voicing it - Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith and Chris Rock. Not that I have anything in particular against any of these actors (well, except perhaps for Rock, whom I tend to find annoying).

It's this trend toward animated films having to have big-name stars paid big-name money for children's movies. Used to be, actors would voice kiddy films for scale, just to be nice, and to have their name and voice on something their own kids would watch. These days, thanks to Robin Williams and that damn Genie from Aladdin, every star wants to be in animated films, and they all want big money to boot.

Madagascar centers around a group of animals living the posh life in Central Park Zoo. Alex, (Stiller) is the most popular animal in the zoo, and he's used to being a pampered celebrity. Marty the Zebra (Rock) dreams of living in that mythical place known as "the wild". Gloria the Hippo (Pinkett-Smith) and Melman the Giraffe (Schwimmer) round out the group of friends.

When Marty stumbles upon a plot by a group of renegade penguins to break out of the zoo and head to Antarctica, he decides to break out of the zoo for a one day trip to the wilds...of Connecticut. The animals don't realize the havoc they wreak as they attempt to reach Connecticut by mass transit. Alex, in particular, is confused - why are these humans, who come to adulate him when he's in his cage and buy their children stuffed likenesses of him, suddenly cower in fear of him when he's loose? There's a message there about the context in which we view each other, and how our perceptions of people are clouded by exterior circumstances.

The public decides the animals "escaped" because of the cruelty of zoos and the animals need to be returned to the wild; the four friends awaken on a boat bound for a Kenyan wildlife refuge. When the penguins hijack the boat, the friends end up stranded on Madagascar, where they meet the funniest bunch of lemurs you ever met, headed up by King Julian voiced hilariously by Sacha Baron Cohen (also known as Ali G). Who knew lemurs were so darn cute? Alex suffers a major self-identity crisis when his hunger forces him to reassess who he really is. As a captive lion, he never really thought about where his steaks came from; here in the wild, everyone from the lemurs to his best friend Marty suddenly looks like dinner.

The film is stuffed with movie references - everything from Star Trek to Twilight Zone to Wild Kingdom to Castaway gets spoofed, and there's a particularly funny scene at the beginning where Stiller spoofs his own turn as "Zoolander". The ending was left rather unconcluded though, presumably to make it easy to release a sequel. It felt abrupt and unfinished to me.

On the whole, Madagascar isn't a bad film, even for the adults who have to watch it with their kids. It may not give you the answer to world peace, but hey, it's a kids' film; there are enough grown-up moments to keep the parents entertained, and the kids will love it.