Randy and I saw the movie “Madagascar” last week. It’s an animated film about a zebra, lion, hippo, and giraffe who live in a zoo in New York but after briefly escaping are shipped off to another zoo only to be stranded on Madagascar where they run into a tribe of lemurs and try to deal with life in the wild. It’s not the best animated film I’ve ever seen but it had its entertaining moments.
Although the story is choppy, as is the script, there are lots of inside jokes for the adults — the writers pay homage to a myriad of other films and television shows such as “Planet of the Apes,” “The Mission,” and “Castaway” just to name a few. These “in-jokes” are almost constant throughout the film and help make the lack of substance more bearable for any adult viewers who have been dragged to the theatre by their kids.
The film isn’t terrible (the soundtrack has some great music on the other hand), but it is rather pointless. Is the moral of the story to not eat one’s friends even if you’re really, really hungry? Is it that you can deny your inbred natural instincts if you just have a strong enough desire? Is it that any carnivore can become flexitarian and only eat some fish if absolutely necessary?
“Madagascar” is a cute family film but with recent animated films like “Finding Nemo” and the Shrek series, the bar has been raised and I don’t think children and adults alike will appreciate much less. Besides, the lemur king sings a cover of Reel 2 Real’s early ‘90s hit “I Like to Move It” which seems to be fun and catchy the first couple of times, but I’m sure will be the bane of many parents by the end of the summer.
My favorite “in-joke” was the Lemur that was holding up the book “To Serve Lemurs” during the council scene.
Some great stuff.
Yeah, we laughed out loud on that one but I don’t think anyone else in the audience was a “Twilight Zone” fan.
I know how you feel, no one else in the theatre, including Heather got it.
Le Sigh.