Seven years ago, DreamWorks struck animated gold with Shrek, a post-modern fairytale about an alienated ogre. The film mixed a plot kids could follow with clever humour adult could appreciate. It wasn’t a new concept but it was one the movie perfected, in the process sparking one of the better CG film franchises of the new millennium. Of course, once the other studios figured this out, they stripped the formula to its bare frame and churned out Ice Age, Happy Feet and a litany of sequels.
Like those movies, the original Madagascar (also made by DreamWorks) had a cash-grab vibe to it and this sequel feels the same. It picks up where its predecessor left off, with the denizens of the Central Park Zoo still marooned in Madagascar. Lion Alex (voiced by Ben Stiller), zebra Marty (Chris Rock), hippopotamus Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) and giraffe Melman (David Schwimmer) are headed back to New York along with a gaggle of periphery characters when their makeshift plane crash lands on a game reserve in Africa. The four leads are shocked to discover other lions, zebras, hippos and giraffes congregating at the area watering hole — among them, Alex’s parents.
The plot lumbers through obligatory song and dance numbers (a modified version of Reel 2 Real’s “I Like to Move It” rears its ugly head again). Meanwhile, each character’s attempts to assimilate into their new lives, where they are no longer one-of-a-kind, mirror the conflicts used in the original while Alex’s daddy issues and expulsion from the pride by his father’s rival Makunga (Alec Baldwin) is a cheap Lion King knock-off.
Stiller, Rock and Pinkett-Smith’s seem cast more for their star-power than for their suitability, although Schwimmer was born to voice the hypochondriac giraffe Melman. But as with so many comedies these days, animated or otherwise, it’s the supporting characters that carry the movie. Sacha Baron Cohen steals every scene voicing Julien, king of the ring-tailed lemurs, with a high-speed version of the Indian accent Peter Sellers adopted in The Party. And the psychotic penguins are given a higher profile this time out — the film’s biggest laughs come from their labour negotiations with a pair of upper-crust monkeys. Kids will enjoy Madagascar 2’s lighthearted nature and frequent slapstick. But it’s these characters that keep the film tolerable for the rest of us.