Not as wild as I'd have hoped. (Madagascar (DVD))

Member Name: magenta23

Product:	Madagascar (DVD)
Date:	23/04/09 (161 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: King Julian

Disadvantages: Slow starter

Madagascar is the 2005 offering from Dreamworks and the makers of Shrek and Shark Tale. The sequel has recently hit DVD (review to follow) and both have proved to be a huge success.

Madagascar tells the story of Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Gloria the hippo and Melman the giraffe and how they escape from New York's central park zoo in search of the wild.

I'm really one for animal films and loved Shrek and all it's sequels. Probably for the first half hour or so of Madagascar I was not impressed. I didn't warm much to the characters and I felt it was a little 'too American' for my liking! The celebrity voices of Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer and Ben Stiller didn't add much for me and I was actually a little bored for about the first third of the film. Also the laughs I think were intended to come from Melman for much of the first part, he's a hypochondriac and very clumsy. Being a giraffe the've made him very wobbly on legs and prone to injuring imself every two minutes. I know kids laugh at this sort of thing but I've never understood why. Watching a supposed loveable character get hurt at every turn doesn't really make me giggle.

After being caught on the run, boxed up and put on a ship (though we are never entriely sure of the intended destination), the ship is hijacked by the penguins from the zoo and runs out of fuel as they reach Madagascar. The penguins are brillant. They are bright and work together secret agent style, to make the most of any situation. These characters have proved such a hit I hear they are now getting their own film!

Once the animals are stranded in Madagascar the film gets going and provides us with some real laughs. The four friends meet King Julian, a Lemur king voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen. For me, this is the character that made the film, and the one example of the celebrity voice being key. You know a character is a success when you hear people doing impressions and knowing lines from heart. My friends at work can often be found reeling off a bit of King Julian! He's self important, a little camp and not the sharpest tool in the box. Qualities bound to make a good character!

King Julian and his army feel the new arrivals on the island, especially Alex the Lion, will be useful to them in protecting the smaller inhabitants from the 'foosas', the wild cats who hunt on them. From their stay in Madagascar, the four friends realise what different animals there are as their natural instincts which have been surpressed in captivity now come to the surface after being in the'wild.'

Overall, once I got to $the end I enjoyed the film. I felt it was a slow starter and though it had some laughs and some good characters does not have the substance of Shrek, for example. For all the animated films relaesed in recent years it's one of the better, and kids and adults alike will enjoy it.

Summary: A good film, but I was expecting more