MADAGASCAR

Director: Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath (Darnell:Antz)
Starring: voices of Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith

Ah, mundanity. More and more very mediocre animated/computer-animated films are being shown at your local cineplex as the ease (and cost) of creating them is lowered and lowered. All of these films hope to replicate some the success that Disney and Pixar and others have had over the last 15 years. Has there been any other genre with a string of hits as impressive as: Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, Hercules, Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Shrek, Shrek 2, and the many other less successful, but still profitable, animated films. With that box office track record we've seen more and more failed attempts such as Sinbad, Shark Tale and, oh yeah, Madagascar. This is not a bad movie. It's just not a success. The problem lies in three areas: 1) Fairly boring characters. 2) Fairly boring situations. 3) Absolutely no theme. Ben Stiller, Jada Pinkett Smith, Chris Rock and David Schwimmer - every one of them is just plain boring in this movie, and that's despite the extreme hyperactivity they display. They play animals in Central Park Zoo that comically end up struggling to survive in the real wild on the island of Madagascar. That sounds like it ought to be fun, but it's not. Even worse, there's no point to the movie. There’s no point to the characters. There's no point to the situations. It's all just vaguely fun babbling and carrying on. There's nothing wrong with that, but there doesn't seem to be too much that's right either. Oh well, I'm running on and on here without really saying anything - kinda like this movie did.

Standouts: Not much stood out for me. Perhaps the unique visuals were notable. Blowouts: The script didn’t go anywhere. The actors were only average.

Grade: C+