Madagascar: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

(Originally published 2005)

It isn’t a lion, a zebra, a giraffe or even a hippo that should have been the focus of the new computer-animated movie, “Madagascar.” It should have been a herd of sheep up there on the screen, gently hopping from one pretty little cloud to the next, quietly lulling you into the inevitable coma the movie induces.

From DreamWorks Animation, which successfully produced “Shrek” and “Shrek 2” before losing its hook deep into the misbegotten “Shark Tale,” “Madagascar” is another misstep for the studio, a movie that gets it all wrong.

Not unlike “The Polar Express” or the recent “Robots,” two great-looking films that were disappointing duds, “Madagascar” is so concerned with getting the incidentals right--the texture of a lion’s mane, the wiry fuzz of a coconut--that it forgoes what really matters, the characters and the story.

At my screening, the film’s intended audience of tots didn’t exactly look as if they were being entertained by the wild kingdom they were promised in the advertisements. Neither did their parents. Instead, chatter and fidgeting were the order of the day. That says plenty about “Madagascar,” but let’s say more.

As directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath from a script by Mark Burton and Billy Frolick, “Madagascar” is hollow, pointless and lazy, almost devoid of narrative pull. It’s good natured, for sure, but here, that doesn’t translate into laughs.

The film opens in Manhattan at the Central Park Zoo with the 10-year-old zebra, Marty (voice of Chris Rock), longing to bust free from the confines of the zoo for the wilds of Connecticut. There, he believes in his striped heart of hearts that he can be free again, which likely is true since Hans Zimmer’s score begins playing “Born Free” whenever Marty has the urge to be free.

Though his friends--lion Alex (Ben Stiller), giraffe Melman (David Schwimmer), hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith)--don’t necessarily mind the zoo, they nevertheless chase after Marty when he escapes. The idea is that they’re going to bring him back, but thanks to some shifty penguins, they actually end up in the jungles of Madagascar, with the increasingly hungry Alex struggling not to see his friends as their natural link in his food chain.

Finally, you think, some tension. Alex will give in to his instinct and his friends will be in danger. There will be a struggle. Lives will be changed. But no--the film plays it safe, turning Alex’s hunger into an extended joke that needs a defibrillator to give it life.

Disney and Pixar would have played it differently. They would have gone to the dark side, knowing that while part of a computer-animated movie’s wow factor does come down to the quality of the computer animation, none of it means Shrek if the meat of the movie is an ogre.

That’s the problem with “Madagascar.” For all of its easy jokes about poo and flatulence, the one stinking here is the movie itself.

Grade: D