ZOO STORY
Escaping from captivity is the easy part for the critters of the amusing 'Madagascar'
By Andy Klein
One of Paul Robeson's greatest films is Song of Freedom (1936), in which the hero, descended from kidnapped slaves, returns to his ancestors' African island home - only to discover that finding one's roots is a mixed blessing.
Madagascar is not a remake of this film.
Still, it has a number of similarities, if you overlook the fact that the island is east of Africa, not west; the characters are animals, not humans; and the whole thing is computer-animated, not live action. But, really, outside of that ... .
Ben Stiller provides the voice of Alex the Lion, king of that rather controlled urban jungle called the Central Park Zoo. Alex has it made: He's a star; he gets fed plenty of yummy raw meat; and he lives with his three best friends - Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer), and Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith).
But Marty - having just celebrated the tenth birthday of his projected 20-year life span - is having a classic midlife crisis. Is this all there is? The same routine day in, day out? Never seeing anything beyond the confines of their rather small zoo? He is particularly fascinated by the mural of his species's African habitat that covers a nearby wall.
He wants to experience life in the wild, which he believes to be somewhere in Connecticut. Alex considers these dreams to be sheer folly and tries to cheer him up, but Marty takes off anyway, and Alex, Melman, and Gloria have to go after him.
Of course, even the famously unflappable New Yorkers are a bit disturbed to see the animals at Grand Central Station, most particularly Alex, who has made a career of playing the tough guy. The fugitives are recaptured, but their escapade mobilizes animal-rights activists, who respond to this desperate cry for help with the demand that they all be shipped back to Africa.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, the penguins are on the boat as well, although why they too would be heading for Africa makes no sense. It certainly makes no sense to them, so they commandeer the boat and turn it around toward Antarctica. In the maneuver, the crates holding our four heroes fall off the boat and wash up on the shore of ... Madagascar.
There they are welcomed by a huge tribe of lemurs, presided over by the self-proclaimed King Julien the 13th (Sacha Baron Cohen, better known as Ali G), a lunatic with an accent of unclear ethnic origins, who is aided by his assistants, Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer) and Mort (Andy Richter). Unfortunately, cut off from his usual supply of meat, the genetically carnivorous Alex begins to go mad with hunger, seeing his friends and their hosts as juicy steaks. Confusion and poignancy ensues.
(Okay, just for the record: Madagascar is pretty much about the last place a ship would pass by on its way from America to anywhere else in Africa. And there are 18 million people living there, whom our heroes never spy. I know: Internet research has magnified my worst nitpicking tendencies.)
In the ongoing, seven-years-so-far war between Disney's and DreamWorks' animation units - which dates back to Jeffrey Katzenberg's unfriendly departure from the former, where he had personally revitalized the moribund animation unit - there is no clear victor. Of course, if you count all the Pixar and Miyazaki productions in Disney's column, it's no contest. But if we leave those out, then we also can't credit DreamWorks with Aardman Animation's Chicken Run and upcoming Wallace & Gromit movie. For every DreamWorks stiff like Sinbad and Shark Tale, Disney has released a Treasure Planet or Brother Bear. To counterbalance Disney's excellent Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch, DreamWorks has its animated crown jewels, the Shrek movies.
Madagascar, codirected by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, doesn't do much to change that. It's way better than the studio's underpowered Shark Tale from last year; but it's unlikely to prove nearly as popular as Shrek.
The script is full of great gags, but, even more than Shark Tale, a huge percentage seem directed toward adults. Children are unlikely to get the American Beauty reference; the under-30s may be baffled by invocations of Hawaii Five-0, Chariots of Fire, and the original Planet of the Apes; and I suspect even some 50-year-olds may be too young to pick up on Born Free, "Holiday for Strings," the New York Giants, and "To Serve Man."
As a nominal adult, I find all of this dandy, but I wonder how the rug rats will respond. Madagascar has a fair amount of broad physical humor that shows the influence of Warner Bros. cartoons, which may help. Its visual style - less concerned than much computer animation with showing off the latest hair and water algorithms - suggests either '50s Chuck Jones cartoons or concurrent UPA shorts.
There is a basic script problem that weakens the story: At the start, Marty appears to be a protagonist, but somewhere halfway through, Alex takes center stage. It's slightly unsettling and hampers audience identification. On the other hand, this does contribute to one of Madagascar's most welcome aspects: There are none of those requisite, neat little life lessons at the end, maybe by design or maybe because we aren't really following a single character's arc.
Stiller does a good job, but his voice is nondescript next to the immediately recognizable Rock. Schwimmer makes sense as the world's first Jewish giraffe. (We briefly hear his name as Melman Menkowitz.) And the casting of Smith adds an extra layer of amusement, since she's not the first choice that comes to mind when you say "hippopotamus." Director McGrath is terrific as the lead penguin, though it's disconcerting how much he sounds like the late Phil Hartman.
But the really great performance here is from Baron Cohen, who gets to prove that he has more characters in his bag than Ali G and Borat. As the manic, idiotic lemur king, he babbles off in all directions, like Robin Williams as Aladdin's genie. Whenever the film seems in danger of getting bland, his scenes kick it up to another level.
Published: 05/26/2005
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