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'Madagascar' lacks freshness, laughs
Movie Review: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic
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PLAY OFFICIAL TRAILER
The gang from Madagascar, that 2005 computer-animated hit, is all here: Alex the posing, city-raised lion; Melman the hypochondriac giraffe; Marty the wisecracking zebra; and Gloria the laid-back hippo.
Having been stranded in Madagascar, that big island off the southeast coast of Africa, Alex and friends, with the help of a squad of industrious penguins who’re also former residents of New York’s Central Park Zoo, plan to return to the comforts of civilization. Unfortunately, the not-so-dependable plane the penguins rebuild gets them only as far as a wildlife preserve in Africa.
Technically, the computer-animated Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa looks good. The animals are substantial and fluid on screen. The story’s continental shift adds African plains and jungle to the picture, plus numerous new animals.
But being a sequel, Escape 2 Africa loses the freshness of experiencing characters for the first time. The film’s high-stakes third act picks up much-needed momentum, but much of what precedes it treads water. Because the film substitutes grownup-style neurosis for comedy, too, laughs are as rare as water in the dry season.
With Alex the lion as the story’s principal character, Escape 2 Africa is a low-rent Lion King. It misses the majesty and superior music and production numbers of the hand-drawn Disney favorite.
The writers create a back story for Alex. He’s kidnapped from Africa as a cub, lost by his kidnappers and, miraculously, he floats in a small wooden crate from Africa to North America. As previously seen in Madagascar 1, the lucky lion became a crowd-pleasing animal celebrity at Central Park Zoo.
Another miracle occurs when Alex’s unplanned return to Africa takes him to the very place from which he was cub-napped.
His happy reunion with his parents (the late Bernie Mac is the voice of Zuba) doesn’t last. Shades of The Lion King again, the power-hungry Makunga (Alec Baldwin in one of the film’s more amusing voice performances) plots to win control of the pride and send Alex into a second exile.
The voice talent from the original film returns, including Ben Stiller as Alex, David Schwimmer as Melman, Jada Pinkett Smith as Gloria and the normally funny Chris Rock as Marty. Even Rock needs funny lines to be funny. So does Sacha Baron Cohen as Julien, though the lemur king’s vainglorious personality alone provides some amusement.
Relegated to mediocrity, the Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is nothing to phone home about.
