Hola all. Massawyrm here.
In a year chock full of such original family entertainment, with films like Kung Fu Panda, Wall-E, The Spiderwick Chronicles, City of Ember and the upcoming Bolt, you knew that somebody had to go back to the well to offer the clichéd, been there done that stylings of the standard, unoriginal talking animal story. So why not Madagascar 2? I’m no fan of the first one, but it wasn’t terrible. So I gave this one a shot. And I found myself pleasantly surprised. It too was not terrible. In fact, I found it marginally better than the first.
That’s not to say that this should in any way be seen as a ringing endorsement. It isn’t. I certainly didn’t find myself liking this film. But I found it more than tolerable. It kept my attention and I was able to get involved in the story, but it never elevated itself to a level that I would ever encourage an adult to see it without the presence of a child eager to see it themselves. It is more of the same from the first movie with two major exceptions. All of the elements from the first film that didn’t work have been dropped and everything that did work has been accentuated.
The penguins are back and are still amusing. It’s not quite the surprise it was originally, so it didn’t have the same punch. But the best gags in the movie are still theirs. There’s one sequence with the primates that is actually quite funny and made me laugh out loud a couple of times. The Lemurs are back again and serve only to be obnoxious until the last half of the film when there’s a series of volcano gags that fire on all cylinders. And most importantly, they’ve found something for every character in the film to do. One of the chief problems with sequels like this is trying to force a story for a character that doesn’t have one – something I like to call Lethal Pesci Syndrome. Here everyone has a solid storyline that weaves together with all the others, making this a step up from the usual randomness of other, similar sequels.
This time around the animals have rebuilt a plane and plan on flying back to New York, only to conveniently crash land on the nature preserve that Alex (Ben Stiller) was born on. This leads to the main thread of the story (which will sound eerily familiar) about the long lost son of the Lion King retuning to face his family. This time, the King is still alive and ready for his son to ascend to the throne, only to discover that his son is a dancer and the “King of New York” is only a stage name. Insert expected touching family drama here. Oh, and Alec Baldwin in the role of Scar…I mean Makunga. Meanwhile, everyone else has similar troubles reintegrating with their various species.
The result is a movie with a few laughs and enough going on to make it worthy of seeing with your kids. The chief problem is that it is nothing new and doesn’t have nearly enough heart to wrap you up in it. Everything just feels too convenient. And really, how many times can we see the animals out of their element story done without a twist? Both Kung Fu Panda and Bolt are very similar stories that go outside of the box and offer us something radically different. This is just more of the same, and it feels like they’ve found the very last jokes to be had in this particular genre of animated film.
That said, it is nowhere near as bad as some of these sequels usually are and thus doesn’t require that you drop the kids off and see something else. And if it were released in any year but this one, it might be easier to recommend. But it didn’t. It came out in a year when kids have access to a lot of very original, very intelligent fare that is as endearing to their parents as it is to them – and compared to that, this doesn’t hold up. While it is certainly leaps and bounds better than the despicable Star Wars: Clone Wars, it never does anything worthy of being seen and embraced by an audience older than ten.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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