Madagascar Review

I haven't blogged in a while. Too many distractions. I'll probably write about them when the summer is drawing to a close. In any event, yesterday was a good time to put up an entry, but like I said, I was distracted.

My sister kept asking if I wanted to come with her and the little kids she was babysitting to watch Madagascar. You know, that movie about zoo animals that end up on the island of Madagascar by some twist of faith. Well, I did go along and this is what I think about it.

As far as the acting goes, this isn't a Shrek as far as the acting goes. The characters are way too flat. They don't really change that much over the course of the film. In fact, the acting doesn't make me care about the characters at all. If anything, everyone sold what the character's main personality is. You will be able to figure out most of their traits before the big key event that gets them stuck on the island.

The animation is really stylized. For some reason, I think they must have struck a deal with Pixar, because most of the people in the first part of the movie look similar to their "Universal Man" model. The only thing I can say about the animation that bugs me is that there were several times I noticed things on the characters that just didn't look right, in particularly the upright walking and anthropomorphic way the animals presented their body language. The only animals in the film that can get away with it are the penguins and the monkeys.

Humor is kind of average. This film is aimed at the family, so as such there are a lot of family jokes. There are also a lot of pop reference jokes in there as well. Surprisingly, the most laughs come from the side character, which I think is a mistake. This means that the audience is not laughing during the bulk of the movie. In fact, I found myself more interested in the penguins than in then actual main cast. That doesn't mean that the main cast doesn't have their fair share of jokes. It is just they are not as funny. On top of that, the two comedians in the opening credits (Chris Rock and Cedric the Entertainer) had to kill any trace of their humor in order to play their characters.

Music is your stereotypical pop music with little to no original score. The music isn't much of anything as far as ambiance or emotional scores go. If anything, they are just there to add to the humor of the film.

As far as plot goes, it isn't all that engaging. It's cute, but there are way too many characters for anyone to write a single plot that involves all of them. But it does it's job in keeping the kid's attention on the film.

On average, I enjoyed the film. Would I see it again? Not in it's full cut, but there are some scenes that I wouldn't mind watching. I can see why my sister took her babysitting kids to the movie. Because it does it's job.