Outside of the lemurs and penguins, the film's quality is about that of direct to dvd. The 4 leads don't work at all and almost every pop culture reference fails.

D+

No surprise as I didn't like the trailer.

***************************************************************

And on the 4 leads, I got that feeling also

as I posted the following in another thread

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I am not thrilled at the voices

David Schimmer
Ben Stiller
Jada Smith

and even

Chris Rock - he hasn't hit a home run in awhile. And I guess he has 2 movies opening on the same day with TLY and Mad. Must be a nice pay day, at least.

I'm seeing it sometime this weekend, probably Sunday. I'll tell you how I like it.

B+

I enjoyed this movie. I loved the penguins and lemurs. Good kids flick.

they really gotta start getting rid of pop culture references in cartoons.

Decent but uneven. Geared towards the younger kids. King Julian, lemurs and the penguins make your visit worthwhile, if you happen to find yourself in this movie.

Madagascar is lot more fun than Robots. There are flashes of brilliance with some of the characters followed with some pedestrian fare. Quite enjoyable the second time, since I knew what to expect.


B+

sadly its all dreamworks knows.

I thought that the movie had a couple of bad things in it but some of the characters were great the Lemurs and the Pengiuns for example.

B

Yeah, The Prince Of Egypt was loaded with them! :wink:

But htey do that Arsi so that the adults can enjoy the film as well. I think the pop references have helped increase the box office takes of many "kids "films.

Shrek/Shrek 2 set the bar pretty high on pop culture jokes.

Cast Away, Planet of the Apes, Born Free, Saturday Night Fever, To Serve Man, Chariots of Fire, American Beauty by way of Family Guy,... none of these jokes in Madagascar really worked. They all seemed forced.

There's a difference between a movie like... Monsters Inc., Toy Story, etc. which use pop culture references tastefully, time to time, to tie the film to the real world.

But really what Dreamworks is doing is creating the genre of Animated Culture Parody Films. While it works with Shrek, it hasn't worked so well with Robots and (well... Fox's) Robots.

Today:

MADAGASCAR - 8/10 (B+)

This was really cute and entertaining. It was colorful, well-animated and absolutely hilarious. Sascha Baron Cohen steals the show as a crazed lemur who is king of the island. It also has a really sweet message about friendship that is handled extremely well. Highly recommended.

In the words of our immortal (is she?) Libs...

"...Ew"

Of course they had to insert the whole Lion is a lion and likes to eat hippos, zebras and giraffes... and drops the subject unconvincingly.

King Julian doing the robot and other amusing moves convinced me to give this movie a...

C

I hope that Fox (Robots) and Dreamworks do not ruin any more CGI flicks.

Funny and very enjoyable, but a step down from the Shrek series. Still, worth watching.

B

I give it a B/B+

You gotta love those penguins...

Not quite as obnoxious as Shark Tale and not quite as aimless as Robots, but wow... in terms of sheer lack of humor and entertainment value, this one takes the cake.

Outstandingly awful.

More tomorrow.

http://www.worldofkj.com/Zingaling-Madagascar.php

C

WOW!!, i never been so disappoted by an CGI animated movie

It was very unfunny and boring, a few laughs
they tried to much to make the movie funny everything just failed!

pretty much a pointless movie!
the only good thing about it, was the penguins and the animation

C-

B-

Lemurs = great

Penguins = ingenious

Animation - top-notch

Humor = decent (see the first two points)

Everything else - falls flat

you got it all right. I thought the same thing about the film.

I upgrade my grade to an A-

The kids started the dance routine at the end credits to the music of I want to move it. That was fabulous.

What a bad bad movie. Not a single "joke" worked for me. One of the worst animation movies I've ever seen. Shark Tale is miles ahead of this (haven't seen Robots). D

Should be posted on the main site soon...

"Madagascar" Fails to Impress

Every year there are a few films which look to be decent, entertaining films, but fail to realize their potential when all is said and done. This year, one of the best examples of such wasted potential is the Dreamworks Animation Studios/PDI yawn, err, yarn, Madagascar.

What starts out innocently enough as a tale of four animals trapped in Central Park zoo slave to the masses demanding attention quickly deteriorates into yet another politically correct moral tale that is neither funny nor original.

It seems that Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the Hippopotamus (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) are all displays, in the urban jungle of Central Park Zoo. Marty desires to be free from the prison of captivity, while Alex wishes nothing but the attention of the masses of spectators. A few misfortunes land all four of the animals, and a few penguins on the island of Madagascar, halfway across the globe, with no protection from the elements. After an encounter with King Julian of the Lemurs (Sacha Baron Cohen), who wishes the animals to save them from the feared foosas, the animals realize there is no escape from the reality that they are trapped. From that point on, it is up to the animals to decide what to do, and where to go. That is of course, if they manage not to kill each other in the first place.

The problems with the film begin almost from the very beginning. The writers, Mark Burton and Billy Frolick, lack the experience to create a truly interesting story, as neither of them has written anything beyond a few Made-for-TV movies. Without being able to act, and a weak script, the voice actors seemed almost trapped in a sub par film. Long segments of dialogue that are neither witty nor funny are interspaced with flat visual gags that do nothing to entertain anyone except the youngest of crowds. It doesn't help that nearly all of the even mildly funny pieces were played endlessly in the numerous previews for the film, thereby reducing even further the scant humour that remains.

Aside from a rather good remake of the song I Like to Move It, Move It the music is also subpar, with only a few good moments were it rises above the sub par level of the rest of the film. Of course, most of those moments are due solely to the "borrowing" of the theme Chariots of Fire, itself an overused musical interlude.

The animation is the one and only area where the film is anything beyond bad, as has been shown in the past with computer generated imagery (CGI), it has the potential to look almost photo realistic. The creators wisely chose to adapt a more cartoonish look.

Overall, the film is far from the masterpieces that have been released in years past such as Shrek and Toy Story, but yet not as bad as last years pop-culture disaster Shark Tale. Unfunny and not entertaining, it rates as a C-, and a disappointing entry into the CGI genre.