Review 61: Madagascar

Madagascar is a delight for children and another success from Dreamworks,

Madagascar tells the story of four animals, Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), who have spent their lives in blissful captivity in the Central Park Zoo. When the zoo's penguins Skipper (Tom McGrath), Kowalski (Chris Miller), Rico (John DiMaggio) and Private (Christopher Knights) decide to make a break for it, Marty follows them into the city. Alex, Gloria, and Melman set out to find Marty before he gets into trouble, but they're a bit too late, and soon the zookeepers have decided that the animals are restless and need to be returned to the wild. Soon the critters find themselves living on the coast of Madagascar, where they discover a group of lemurs under attack by Fossa while Alex tries to formulates a plan to escape back to New York, the Lemurs leader King Julian (Sacha Baron Cohen) formulates a plan to use the the friends to defend them against the Fossa.

The plot is great combination of adventure coupled with an underlying theme of friendship, its funny, its lighthearted, its escapist, the animation is great, the score by Hans Zimmer is catchy, directors Eric Darnell's and Tom McGrath's animation direction is spot on, the production design is splendid recreating New York and Madagasgar, the character design is fantastic and beautifully detailed, the scenery is beautiful, the characters are memorable, it takes somewhere we might be able to go because its too expensive and the ending was excellent.

The vocal performances are great, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith and David Schwimmer play their roles effortlessly, Tom McGrath, Chris Miller, John DiMaggio and Christopher Knights are cocky as the four penguins and Sacha Baron Cohen once again shows us how great a comedian he can be in his role as King Julian.

Honestly Madagascar is another achievement from dreamworks and I say familes will love it, 4/5

The Anonymous Critic