New York Zoo animals go on a rescue mission to the jungle. The plot may confuse children, and the characters are nothing special, but Disney’s animation shines.
I guess the easy way to dismiss
this animated-animal clunker would be to say I liked it (slightly) better when
it was called Madagascar. Both movies feature a group of animals who
travel from a zoo to the jungle. In each case, it’s the New York Zoo. Ho hum.
But the movies are different. The zoo and the characters in this one are a lot
more fanciful. The NY Zoo here features several phyla engaged in the largest
curling match south of Medicine Hat. The younger kids may already be lost at
this point. I will say that Disney’s animation was spectacular. I would have
been scared of the lion, Samson, except he’s cowardly. Another thing different
about this is that there’s a male squirrel trying to put the moves on the
female giraffe. There were no intimations of anatomically improbable bestiality
in Madagascar. This is, sadly, the best running gag in the movie. The
most amusing character was the British-accented koala, who, like a lisp-less
version of Ice Age’s Sid, fails to earn the respect he craves. The main
story is about how Samson (Kiefer Sutherland), a single dad, has some
communication gaps with his young son, who runs away, and also runs up against
some uppity wildebeests. Ho hum. This movie made me think, although mostly as
an alternative to listening to the dialogue. I was thinking the same thing as
after I saw the credits for Hoodwinked, which is that Janeane Garafolo,
who voiced the giraffe, sounds just like Anne Hathaway. Also, why is the
male-female ratio in all of these animated animal films about four to one (even
higher here)? Are all of the females home baking? So many places to let the
mind wander when watching this.
posted 8/24/13
