- About halfway through Madagascar, I decided to have some fun trying to isolate exactly when this film was made. References to movies like Cast Away and American Beauty hinted at a circa 2000 release date, but the portrayal of New Yorkers as anything but assholes strongly suggested a post-9/11 pedigree. And what about the insertion of the syllable "iz" into words that did not initially contain it? I'm hardly an expert on Snoop Dogg, but that feels like an early 2000's thing to do. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that Madagascar was released in 2005! Wow, it was dated even when it came out!
- Unfortunately, that story represents the apex of fun that I had while watching this film. It's not that the movie was awful, but mostly that it was aimed at an audience that certainly did not include me. An audience that, in my mind, would have to be both young and sugar-addled. The constant freneticism of the main characters immediately reminded me of Tigger's idea to make everyone else a Tigger, too. That plan was only funny because of how the other, more reasonable A. A. Milne creations reacted to it. Hadn't the makers of Madagascar seen any Pixar films? Didn't they know that modern cartoons could be relatively relaxed and intelligent?
- The look of the film is forgettable in much the same way that most of last decade's CGI animated features were. As for the cast, Ben Stiller and David Schwimmer prove to be more entertaining as voice actors than regular actors. Cedric the Entertainer is a better voice actor than a comedian, although the opposite is true for Chris Rock. Jada Pinkett Smith, too, is a better actress than her turn as a hippo would suggest. Sacha Baron Cohen gives his lemur an Indian accent for reasons that I'll surely never fathom, and Andy Richter is reduced to making baby noises. The penguin resistance movement, however, is kindof funny. Maybe the film should have been entirely about them.
- The film also contains references to Planet of the Apes and The Twilight Zone, so it's pretty much all over the place.
