Saw it last night, and it was funny, poignant, and touching, with about ten laugh-out loud moments for me. Lots of clever references, from Chariots of Fire to Planet of the Apes, and excellent CGI.
All in all, it’s one of those films marketed to youngsters but that will also appeal to their parents, like the scene where the monkeys exploit the zoo-break:
“It says here Tom Wolfe is speaking at the Lincoln Center.”
:second monkey signs furiously:
“Well, of COURSE we’re going to throw poo at him!”
Having spent yesterday at the movies watching REVENGE OF THE SITH and THE LONGEST YARD, I really wish I had followed my first inclination and seen MADAGASCAR after reading your enthusiastic thumbs up.
I dunno, I thought it fell flat like the Ring of Power in Bag End.
Again, Dreamworks can sure come up with brilliant animation and great jokes and references…but they suck ass at actually having a story I could give a damn about. Halfway through this I was all ‘let’s get back to the penguins…these assholes are too whiny for me’.
Even the five-year-old (the reason we went to it told me later (Direct Quote): “It didn’t hold my attention.”
Story. It should be about story. Not just gags (some of which were funny, I admit). It was like pie that was all whipped cream and no filling.
I thought it was a fine kids’ movie for kids, as opposed to a kids’ movie for all ages. As an adult, it wasn’t painful to watch in the way, say, “Country Bears” probably would be, but although it had its moments I wasn’t entranced. A perfectly fine rental movie, but not something I would recommend that friends rush out to see in a theater.
One of my coworkers went with her husband and two kids. She said the guy next to her fell asleep, as did her husband. She commented that it is the worst animated feature she has seen, and that her kids only laughed at the most obvious physical comedy.
My daughter only laughed a couple of times. Afterwards when we asked her what her favorite part was, she couldn’t think of anything. I almost fell asleep while watching it.
I thought it was similar to “Robots” in that sense. Good animation, some funny gags, enjoyable to watch, but ultimately forgettable.
I also thought the subject of Alex’s conflict was not appropriate for a kid movie.
One day kids will realize that meat=animals, but I don’t really want a major part of a kid movie showing lovable characters as juicy steaks.
I’m always suspicious of an animated movie where the advertisements were more about the celebrity voices than the actual story. Madagascar set off my warning buzzers when the trailer stacking up star names like cordwood…
Ebert and Roeper both felt the same way about that very point. They felt it missed the mark as a kid’s movie and didn’t have a strong enough story to entertain adults. I imagine I’ll wait for video.
I thought that was one of the best parts. This is the first animal movie I’ve seen that actually dealt with the fact that predators need to eat meat and meat comes from animals.
I am not sure that I’d want to take a young kid to it but I thought the completely callous scene where the animals were witnessing the joy of nature red in tooth and claw (everything cute crossing their path getting eaten) was absolutely hilarious.
The voice acting was less annoying than I expected and there were one or two golden moments, but overall it was pretty meh for me. I’m glad we went because we needed a silly film tonight, and taken on those terms it was just fine.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it. I do remember them mentioning that hunting was “female work” though. It’s still on my long list of movies where predators make friends with herbivores and they don’t really make it clear how they eat. From what I can remember about The Lion King our hero Simba ended up growing into a big strong lion by eating grubs and insects.
I’m not advocating graphic representations of predator behavior for young children. I just don’t see the harm in making them aware of where their meat is coming from.
This is why DreamWorks Animation pictures continue to be inferior to those by Pixar. Pixar’s movies are sincere. They present their characters, conflict and plot alone, without any help from the outside world. There’s nothing inherently wrong with real-world references or pop-culture jokes, but they can (and often do) serve as a cheap way out of an underdeveloped story. This is why the Toy Story movies, Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc will be classics long after everybody stops getting the jokes in the Shrek movies and Shark Tales.
I still plan on seeing Madagascar, though. It looks like fun.