First movie review: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

First off I have to say that I really enjoyed the first Madagascar movie. Lately the two giants when it comes to computer animated movies have been Pixar and Dreamworks. Now it's hard to say which of them makes better movies because they all have their merits. Like I thought Wall-E was a masterpiece and the first Shrek was great and the other two didn't quite live up to the first but were still good.

Now to Madagascar. The movie starts with some back story on Alex and how he wound up in the Central Park Zoo. Then the movie uses some footage from the first movie to fill you on what happened just in case you didn't see the first one or a coma or neuralizer erased your memory of the first movie. Then you see everybody getting on a plane piloted by Tony Soprano's pet penguins. They take off but wind up crashing in Africa which shouldn't be a surprise because the title tells you that's where they are going. Now the rest of the movie is interesting because it follows multiple plots. Alex runs into some other lions and tries to fit in, Mary runs into other Zebras who are exactly like him (they are all even voiced by Chris Rock), Melman finds out that all the giraffes in Africa are just as big hypochondriacs as he is so he becomes a doctor, Gloria goes looking for love and winds up meeting another hippo named Moto Moto voice by Will.I.Am, King Julien just wanders around a bit being his usual weird self (but when you are voice by Sacha Baron Cohen is there really any other choice?), the penguins attempt to fix the plane, and the old lady who beat Alex with her purse in the first movie returns and wanders around with a group of tourists trying to survive the wilds of Africa.

Now if your head isn't already spinning from the plethora of plots I just described to you then it might be when you watch the movie. This isn't saying the movie is bad it's just that with so many things going on at once it becomes a bit episodic. At times it's like they wanted to involve each of the characters as much as possible so they all had to have their own story lines but that makes the movie jump around a lot.

But the movie is funny. At times I found myself laughing harder than I remember doing in the first movie. But the problem lies in the jokes being spaced pretty far apart. Now some people have said that most of the good jokes come from the penguins and yes they do provide many of the good lines I found that the other characters were just as good.

I think this movie will appeal to kids and to adults. If you liked the first Madagascar then there is a very good chance you'll like this one too. Now if you haven't seen the first one I would say go rent it before you see this one. Not that you really need to but it's best to get to know the characters and see where it all began.

My score is 7.0/10.