MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA
MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA |
 |
Alex, Marty, Gloria and Melman are ready to leave Madagascar and head back to New York. If only penguins knew how fly a plane, they might have made it. | score 2+ |
moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable) |
| FIND A MOVIEREVIEW |
| Cast Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, David Schwimmer Director Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath Screenwriter Etan Cohen Country USA Rating / Running Time G / 89 minutes Australian Release December 2008 Official Site (c) moviereview
2006-2008
ABN 72 775 390 361 |
In some quarters,
notably those of four-year-old boys, this is the sequel of the
year. Forget Goal 2
or Bond 22
– it’s the story of Alex the lion and Marty the
zebra that
keep them awake, aching to return to Madagascar where a stranded cast
of misfits are preparing to fly from the land of the free to the home
of the brave – that is, New York Zoo. It goes wrong of
course.
The plane, engineered by a psychotic crew of penguins and flown by a
party-boy lemur, soon crash lands in Africa. A pre-credit prequel sets the story, and the tone – one much more routine, and much less urgent, than the frenetically enjoyable Madagascar. This is about family, duty and loyalty when fate intervenes to reunite Alex with his parents while Marty, Gloria and Melman make new friends. Not forgetting their Disney roots, they also learn that friends are the most important family. Yet there are bright spots amid the conventionality, almost all with the secondary cast of kooks and therein Madagascar 2’s weak point. Colourful direction notwithstanding, this is a loose, somewhat unsuccessful assembly of two films. Screwball to the left (cue fetishistic penguins, sartorial monkeys, loony lemurs and, to some extent, Alex’s rival to rule the waterhole), needy romantics to the right (cue everyone else). Laughs come with the former, gee-whiz with the latter. Depending on preference, pining starts whenever your cast leaves the stage. Not that the four year olds will mind; only those hoping for a bit more than just another sequel. But for every ‘I love you Dad’, there’s a penguin in love with a spring doll; and for every ‘You’ll always be my friend’, there’s a lemur who wants to be a professional whistler. Plus a bellicose granny who doesn’t like lions. She really doesn’t. // COLIN FRASER |