I love the original Madagascar, so I approached this three-years-afterward sequel with some trepidation, especially when I heard the mixed reviews …
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
| Overall |  | Story |  |
| Production |  | Acting | |
Story: M2 suffers a bit for starting with the previous movie, a self-contained story not framed around a sequel. Having made the island of Madagascar safe for lemurs, our gallant band of New York City Zoo animals manages to make it over to Africa — to a Kenyan wildlife preserve (though that’s never quite quite spelled out). And preserve just happens to be where Alex the Lion was born before, through a series of improbable events (which describes the movie), he was found in New York City. And where, in fact, his father still rules the watering hole as a “Lion King” Lite.
There’s a lot of interesting stories here — Alex learning lionhood, Marty learning about being an individual in a herd, etc. — but rather than focus on any one or two of them (as the original film did), we focus on all of them, and others besides. The result is a loss of focus, as potentially promising narratives get plucked for yocks, leaving us wondering at the end what exactly just happened here.
It’s not as derivative or feeble an effort as some of the reviews have made it, but it’s a lesser film than the original. It struggles mightily against the Sequel Syndrome (“Let’s only take the parts of the previous film that were laugh lines or memorable and recycle them,” which inevitably loses the balance that the rest of the movie provided), but it succumbs in too many places.
Acting: Nothing much new here. The voice artists — new and recurring — are all competent and charming.
Production: Dreamworks’ animation here is a big step above the original, almost too much so — the fine detail on the cartoony animal shapes gets to be almost distracting. But, all in all, this film is beautiful, truly well done (despite some “distinguishing marks” that seem to come and go).
Overall: Katherine loved it (though there were some sad parts for her third-grader self). The adults in the group found it enjoyable, too. But while I’ve willingly pulled out and watched Madagascar a number of times, I just don’t see myself doing so for Madagascar 2 — nor do I find myself anticipating the trilogy …
[WARNING: Comments may have spoilers.]
But, are there more Penguins, Lemurs and Chimps? That is the important question, since they were the only funny parts of the first movie, and the rest of the movie can, most likely, be fast forwarded through.
There are more penguins, lemurs, and chimps.
Well, there’s more air time for the Speaking Lemurs, to excess.
There’s more time with the chimps, too, though not to any great effect.
There’s more fun with the penguins, but it felt more … “hey, let’s do some more funny stuff with the penguins” vs. “hey, the story would be improved by adding in some funny stuff with the penguins here.”
We clearly disagree with the “funny stuff” on the first movie, but that’s what makes a zebra race, as Twain didn’t say.
And another thing (though this is going to sound a bit odd): the critters in the first movie were more … animal-like. Or, rather, when they weren’t (Marty’s cabana, penguins hijacking the ship), it was an amusing side-light. In this movie, the un-animal-like behavior is ramped up to be nearly constant, the human-animal interactions are jarring, and the predator-prey lessons from the first film are completely ignored. Irksome.
Hmm…
Well, if you end up buying it, I’ll ask to borrow it.
I make it a 60% chance that we will, and that mostly for Katherine.