MADAGASCAR

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
DreamWorks Animation
Grade: B-
Directed by: Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath
Written by: Mark Burton, Billy Frolic, Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath
Cast: Voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada
Pinkett Smith
Screened at: Beekman, NYC, 5/23/05

They say that there are eight million stories in New York. Thanks to the research uncovered by Mark Burton, Billy Frolic, and co-directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, the numbers must be adjusted. There are really eight million and nine: census takers neglected to add Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria, plus a few penguins with tales of their own. Marty, you see, is a zebra who is philosophic enough to question his racial identity: is he black with white stripes or white with black stripes? For his part, Alex, king of the Central Park Zoo, is the “mane” character, a natural-born showman who learns more about himself through the broadening effects of travel. Melman is the great-necker, so to speak, a giraffe with a Woody-Allen size case of hypochondria, while the extra-sized hippo Gloria, despite her big mouth, simply tags along and does not develop any special insights through her expedition to the other side of the world.

“Madagascar” is situated partly in central Manhattan, and partly on the exotic East-African island of Madagascar, the latter location chosen by the film-makers because it represents the opposite, culturally and physically, of New York. But while some films, such as “Star Wars–Episode III” have their casts traveling far and wide (George Lucas took his ensemble to Thailand, China, Switzerland and other locales), no gas has been used up in the making of this DreamWorks feature, because it’s a product of that studio’s animation team. Anyone who remembers the two version of “Shrek” can attest to the studio’s quality in that regard. Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath had their animation team use computers, yet the picture is a throwback to the 1950's cartoons rather than one that uses the current technology exhibited, for example, in “Shrek.” The job of the animators is complex largely because they had to fit animals as diverse as the four-story-high giraffe with the likes of the cute little lemur, Mort.

While we don’t know what Woody Allen would think of the picture overall, he’d certainly go for the team’s adulation of Manhattan, a place in which even a lion (voice of Ben Stiller), a giraffe (voice of David Schwimmer), a zebra (voice of Chris Rock) and a hippo (voice of Jada Pinkett Smith) would rather be than in their natural, African habitats. Like human denizens of supermarkets, the gang has no notion of how animals in the wild need to attack their food supply: everything they need is handed to them, and the king of Central Park’s zoo will put on a show every day for the crowd of wildly cheering kids just to get his slab of steak.

Nonetheless when the curious penguins and, soon thereafter, Marty the giraffe break out of their unnatural digs around Manhattan’s 61st Street, their friends follow suit, arguing that poor Marty would soon enough be confused and lonely. Captured, the animals are sent in crates to Africa, but when the penguins mutiny and turn the ship around, the playful animals land–like Tom Hanks in “Cast Away”–on an island uninhabited by human beings. It’s only there, where they meet a tribe of party-loving lemurs (found, by the way, only in Madagascar), that Alex sheds his faux-civilized habits and tears after his best friend Marty, who now represents his dinner rather than his pal.

The pace is rapid and the picture at eighty-six minutes does not outlast its welcome. There are few gags, however, thrown in for adults...just one mention of Tom Wolfe, another about how you can’t find a single star in New York (even the one alleged star turns out to be just a chopper). The New York scenes are lit in a muted style, the colors becoming vivid, almost leaping out at us, in sunny Madagascar. Chris Rock’s easy-to-recognize voice gives a humorous edge to Marty the zebra (in a role that could as well have been given to Eddie Murphy, who played the donkey in “Shrek”) and Ben Stiller’s lion steals the show whether he is basking in the zoo attended to by six keepers with blow-dryers or scaring lemurs Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen), Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer) and the rest of the exotic species in Madagascar.

Rated PG. 86 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com