Directed by: Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath
Starring: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer
Other Actors of Note: Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Bernie Mac, Alec Baldwin, Phil LaMarr
Plot: The sequel to 2005's "Madagascar", in which New York Zoo animals, Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe and Gloria the Hippo, still stranded on Madagascar, start to leave the island. All of a sudden, they land in the wilderness of Africa, where Alex meets the rest of his family, but has trouble communicating with them after spending so much time at the Central Park Zoo. Taken from www.imdb.com.
"Don't look Doll, 'Shrek Goes Fourth' will be out soon."There are two kinds of Computer Animated movies. There are Pixar movies and then there's everybody else. Fully CG movies are nothing new any more and have generally lost all novelty but for some reason most studios fail to be able to pull it off with non-Pixar hits ranging from mediocre ("Open Season", "Flushed Away", "Dinosaur") to godawful ("The Wild", "Doogal") with "Shrek" being the one exception to the rule.
"Madagascar" was a movie that could be best described as "okay" it was a sea of mediocrity speckled with a few rare chunks of genuine humor tossed in. However the sequel looked promising as the trailer was catchy and Etan Coen (who co-wrote "Tropic Thunder" and whom I found out only recently is a seperate entity from Ethan Coen) wrote the script so I grabbed my coat and sped off to the $5 theater to give Dreamworks another chance to not suck. I should have taken it as an omen when I totalled my truck by hitting the biggest goddamn deer this Earth has ever produced on the way to the theater. Still I was strangely optimistic, you could say that I was... questionably content... (I was ominous just there.)
So this movie picks up where the first left off with Alex (Ben Stiller), Marty (Chris Rock), Melman (David Schwimmer), Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), and the penguins: Skipper (Tom McGrath), Kowalski (Chris Miller), Private (Chris Miller), and Mason (Conrad Vernon) leaving Madagascar to go back to New York.
Naturally things go terribly wrong and hijinks ensue and the ragtag group (along with Lemur King Julian (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his henchman Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer) end up in Africa where, if you actually stayed awake long enough for the first movie, you'll recall they were headed to in the fucking first place.
Unfortunately they wind up in some pseudo "The Lion King" on an animal reserve while an old Jewish lady conquers to wilds and small flightless birds rock out to "Boston."
"No seriously, we're cool. No further sequels are necessery from this point on."Pretty much all the performances are the same here, the four leads are well below par even for their incredibly waning careers and that goes for pretty much everyone except Alec Baldwin who is always horrible in everything that isn't "30 Rock." He essentially plays Scar only minus the scar and with a haircut that could only be worn by a gay German hairdresser named Bruno.
The few exceptions include Sacha Baron Cohen who is as entertaining as he was the first go-round as King Julian.
This is yet another dud performance for the late Bernie Mack whose genius was sadly rarely realized before his unfortunate demise. (Ah well, we'll always have Bobby Bolivia...)
The Penguin Christmas special that came with the original "Madagascar" DVD was pretty much the only reason to buy the movie so it comes as no surprise that once again the penguins are the main, and pretty much only, reason to watch. When they're onscreen the movie is good and you feel you're watching something great, and then we go back to the main characters and you find yourself glancing at your watch.
The average aftermath of an American Airlines flight.The CG in this film is pretty poor even for a cheaper made movie. Everything is clunky and cartoonish in a way that seems unintentional putting the quality only slightly over that of the original "Toy Story" this is also exacerbated by the fact that the character models are mostly all bland and uninspiring.
Tonight on Night Line NBC: Furries and the sick shit they're into. "Madagascar 2" is pretty creatively bankrupt storyline-wise. Alex and Marty still struggle with their burgeoning gay inter-racial relationship bu this time with a dash of racism when we find out that all zebras look and sound exactly alike. I'm sure they also survive on a steady diet of fried chicken, watermelon, and red Kool Aid as well.
Meanwhile we deal with the giraffe and the hippo falling in love which is more than a little weird when you give it actual thought. Pretty much nothing else happens as the "villain" of the story is only slighltly more profound than the mangy lion things from the first movie.
A few moments of comedy are spot on and well done (I think maybe two of them don't actually involve penguins) but it's just another lovely dumbed down movie to feed our kids, though admittedly it's a fairly decent one. The thing is, there's nothing really wrong with "Madgascar 2" there's just nothing particularly right about it.
They just saw the trailer for "The Tale of Despereaux""Madagascar 2" is just another of Dreamworks Animation's spectacularly unspectacular movies that most people will rent at Red Box and never watch again.
I give "Madagascar: This Poster Is Ambiguous as to The Location of the Letter 2" a 3 out of 5.
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