马达加斯加2:逃往非洲,Madagascar:Escape 2 Africa

These poor animals. First, they're hauled away from the comforts of the Central Park Zoo to be stranded on Madagascar. Then they find a crashed Cargo Cult airplane from World War II, tape the plane together and try to fly it back home. Why would they rather be in New York? Can't get a cab in Madagascar? They all belong to separate species, but they're comfortable with diversity. These guys would have turned themselves in to Noah.

It doesn't look like that plane is gonna make it. That doesn't mean across the Atlantic from Africa. It means across Africa to the Atlantic. Do they (or their audience) realize Madagascar is east of Africa, in the Indian Ocean? How I know, I had a friend from Madagascar once. Beat me at chess. Some people are probably wondering about the title "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," because they think the animals escaped 2 Africa in the first place. Now shouldn't they be escaping 4rom Africa? So they take off, and (spoiler?) crash in Africa. Now they are faced with exactly the same dilemma as in the first film: Can wild animals survive in the wild?

They do a pretty funny job, which is the point. This is a brighter, more engaging film than the original "Madagascar." I'll bet Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg was hands-on. When he was at Disney, he made friends with a lion during the filming of "The Lion King." He even appeared with it on a leash at the junket. He looked more relaxed than the members of the press. Usually at a junket, they're the ones who do the eating.

All of the original voice talents are back, doing their original characters. What an all-star cast: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Bernie Mac, Alec Baldwin and will.i.am, who has one of those names like his mother was frightened during pregnancy by a typographer. www.130q.com

The look of "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" is open and sunlit. Better the wild savannah than the dense jungle. The action is thrilling (sacrifices to a volcano, a struggle for water), and there is a touching romance between Gloria the hippo and Melman the giraffe. I want to think Melman is not named after Larry "Bud" Melman, but I don't have the strength of character. Anyway, the prospect of a giraffe making love to a hippo is enough to set me writing limericks. Can it be done? I think it might be safer than a hippo making love to a giraffe.

So OK, kids, if you liked the first one, this is better. Your parents may like it too, although they may have to dash out for just a second to see "Soul Men."

马达加斯加2:逃往非洲,Madagascar:Escape 2 Africa

To a film critic, the mainstream is like a ravenous shark with a defective hypothalamus. As long as Hollywood seeds the entertainment waters with chum, the masses will feed and feed until their dead, lifeless eyes roll back in their head. Examples of this baffling binge and purge are released every year with inexplicable, unexplainable crowd-pleasers like Wild Hogs, Norbit, and Night at the Museum. Now comes Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, the even louder, more obnoxious sequel to Dreamworks' loud, obnoxious CGI original. This is a film about more: more already dated pop culture references, more digitally-rendered eye candy, more abject pandering to a seemingly easy-to-satisfy demographic.

After being stranded on the tiny, titular African island, our four heroes—egomaniacal lion Alex (Ben Stiller), hypochondriac giraffe Melmen (David Schwimmer), smartass zebra Marty (Chris Rock), and lovelorn hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith)—are finally headed home. On a junk airplane refurbished by those pesky penguins, self-proclaimed King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen), along with his right-hand advisor Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer), will take the quartet back to New York. Of course, things don't go as planned, and everyone ends up in the middle of a wildlife preserve in Africa. There, Alex meets up with his dad (Bernie Mac), mom (Sherri Shepherd), and conniving Uncle Makunga (Alec Baldwin). When the fun-loving feline fails at the tribe's right of passage, however, it's clear these big city critters need to get back to Manhattan.

Like being beaten over the head with a bag of baby bunnies, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is so relentlessly cutesy-pie it's almost sickening. This is a big screen experience so kid-oriented it should come with a pacifier and a selection of Huggies. It goes for the easy, unimaginative laughs and then barely succeeds at finding said funny business. Instead, it supports the cackles from chaos theory of comedy. Just scream and yell a lot while offering a great deal of visual busy work and Baby's tiny brain will bray with manipulated happiness. As part of this year's pack of computer-generated cartoons, it can't compare to Kung Fu Panda or Wall-E. In fact, it doesn't even compete with The Lion King, the 2-D Disney delight from which Escape 2 Africa cribs most of its plot.  www.130q.com

And this doesn't even begin to address the inappropriate nature of some of the material. The ualizing of cartoon animals hasn't been this blatant since Bugs Bunny gussied up to seduce Elmer Fudd, and do we really need to see a female hippo get horny over a possible hunky partner? Or how about a penguin's unnatural lust for a dashboard ornament? Even worse, danger is ever-present here, whether it's from poachers, volcanoes, drought, misguided sea creatures, or a little old lady who beats the living snot out of the characters every chance she gets, the most deplorable element of this shrill spectacle. Why PETA wastes its time protesting the Olsen twins and not taking on Madagascar's animal bashing is a mystery.

Still, if it makes the wee ones happy and keeps their parents at bay, no one will really complain. Madagascar 2 will make money, and the cast will reconvene in a couple of years to make the already unnecessary three-quel. At least there is no questioning the visual approach—the movie looks amazing. As an example of the technological leaps and bounds the genre has experienced, the images are astounding. But this is a movie relying on its wit, not its vistas, to keep audiences interested. In that regard, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa plays it safe. It's the viewer who'll be sorry.

马达加斯加2:逃往非洲,Madagascar:Escape 2 Africa

You have to give them credit, whoever came up with idea of blowing regular ol’ movies up to IMAX size, because it has brought back to movie theaters the kind of spectacle we simply can’t reproduce at home, not even with plasma widescreens and blu-ray players. I saw Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa in IMAX: It. Is. Jaw-droppingly. Gorgeous. (Make that yellow light a green if you can see it in IMAX.) Kudos, too, of course, to the animators, who achieve the perfect balance between realistic representations of, you know, real things -- there’s one sweeping vista of the African serengeti here that took my breath away -- and stylized design: I love that the animals don’t look like people. They don’t look like real animals, but they retain the qualities that define them as a lion, a giraffe, a hippo, a zebra, a penguin, and so on.

Escape is so gorgeous, in fact, that it took me a while to realize that the heart and the soul of the first Madagascar, the aspect that made it so special, is missing here... no, not missing, but inverted to a degree that it almost negates the first film. Which is a genuine shame. As a pleasantly rowdy cartoon that diverts and amuses, one that will appeal to a wide audience without having to dumb itself down to do so -- which is, it must be noted, a grand achievement on its own -- Escape is a splendid success. It’s when held up to its predecessor that it feels a bit... lacking.

The returning writing and directing team of Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath have only themselves to blame: they set the bar high with the previous film, warping -- and I do mean warping -- a deeply touching valentine to New York City and to urban civilization on the whole with their tale of zoo animals suddenly lost in nature. Showoff performing lion Alex (the voice of Ben Stiller: Tropic Thunder, The Heartbreak Kid) and funnyman zebra Marty (the voice of Chris Rock: You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Bee Movie) could only be friends within the cultivated confines of city life, what with Alex being a carnivore and Marty being made of meat and all. Perhaps there’s no such thing as “natural” enemies, or that if there is, then maybe removing “nature” from the equation isn’t such a bad thing: that was one of the vital thematic points of Madagascar, which was of course a metaphoric heads-up for, you know, us human animals.

In Escape, though, Alex and Marty get even more lost in nature when they attempt to get home to New York... except it’s a far more idealized nature this time out, where, it seems, all the lions and all the zebras have no trouble getting along all the time. Their abortive flight from the island of Madagascar -- more on that in a bit -- gets them only as far as continental Africa and a protected wildlife preserve. They don’t realize it’s protected, of course, and there’s the tiniest thematic suggestion that this is yet another kind of zoo... but it’s the barest suggestion that is instantly forgotten. The lions here -- including Alex’s parents -- appear to have no trouble refraining from eating the local zebras, hippos, and giraffes. What they actually are eating is not a topic that is broached... which might be fine in another film that was not a sequel to one that didn’t shy away from the idea that what our bodies want and need is not always something that can be ignored, that our bodies shape us in ways that our minds may not like. www.130q.com

But never mind. Adventures in readjusting -- again -- to yet another alien environment for the city slicker critters ensue. I won’t spoil any of that: it’s all funny and sweet and clever. What rankles me in Escape is who is cast in the villain role here: a band of human tourists from, coincidentally enough, New York City, who are also lost in Africa and whose attempts to re-create their concept of what civilization is results in some very bad things happening to the animal denizens of the protected preserve. Basically, the humans are doing precisely the same thing Alex and Co. did in Madagascar, but they’re the bad guys for it now.

If I didn’t have the brilliant first movie to look back on, this reversal, well, wouldn’t be a reversal, and I could take it on its own terms even if I disagreed with the idea that “nature” is automatically better than “civilization.” But Darnell and McGrath have to cheat here, in light of what they espoused in that first film, by creating an idealized concept of “nature” in order to cast it as the preferable alternative to urban living.

But if you can turn your brain off -- as I obviously can’t -- there’s some wonderful stuff in Escape, too. Like a terrifying and simultaneously hilarious airplane sequence, as the penguins -- oh yes, they’re back -- make King Julien’s cargo-cult crashed-airplane temple just about airworthy again in order to fly the zoo gang home. (They fail, as I noted, but it’s a riot watching them fail.) And there’s King Julien (the voice of Sacha Baron Cohen: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan), a delightfully clueless yet impossibly arrogant little monster. Alec Baldwin’s (The Good Shepherd, Running with Scissors) minor villain, the lion Makunga -- shades of The Lion King’s Scar -- is a hoot. Good stuff. Funny stuff.

Look, it’s fine. It’s cute. The kids will love it. Their parents won’t be bored. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is a perfectly nice time at the flicks. But the unexpected and affecting wisdom of Madagascar is still ticking over in my head, three years later. And I’ve all but forgotten its sequel already.

马达加斯加2:逃往非洲,Madagascar:Escape 2 Africa

One reason to lament the existence of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (which will hereafter be referred to merely as Madagascar 2) is too bemoan the considerable amount of talent that was tied up developing this uninspired sequel when it could have been employed in the service of something fresh and new. As a product - a flashy and shiny bauble lighting up the screen, featuring familiar faces and voices and offering a brief diversion from the real world - Madagascar 2 accomplishes what it sets out to do. The bar isn't that high, but the picture clears it. This movie reminds me of the forgettable Disney animated movies from the immediate pre- Little Mermaid era: creative sinkholes brought to the screen exclusively to provide parents and children with an opportunity to bond over something that's not frightfully bad. If Madagascar 2 is the best Dreamworks can provide to go toe-to-toe with Pixar's beautiful WALL*E, then it's game, set and match to the Disney subsidiary.

The IMAX version of Madagascar 2 is being sold as the best way to see the film, and it's no wonder. Whatever faults this movie may have, it is a visual feast and a definite step-up from the disappointing look of its predecessor. With full, vibrant colors and richly detailed backgrounds, Madagascar 2 has as much "pop" as any recent digitally animated production. The bigger the screen, the more likely one is to become immersed in the experience and not care as much about the myriad weaknesses that keep Madagascar 2 grounded. If only the movie had a story to match the craft of its animators. The problem with the film lies with the writers (who are also the co-directors). Instead of doing something interesting with the leftovers from the first Madagascar, they elected to play it safe and perform a do-over. And, at least for adults, safe can be boring. Kids will be delighted by the cute, wisecracking animals and vivid hues. Adults can sleep through half the movie and not miss anything.  www.130q.com

Returning are our animal cracker heroes from the first film: Alex the dancing lion (voice of Ben Stiller), Marty the acid-tongued zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the dour giraffe (David Schwimmer), and Gloria the happy hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith). When the makeshift plane they're using to return to their Central Park Zoo home goes down not long after takeoff, they find themselves stranded in Africa. This unexpected detour reunites Alex with his father, Zuba (the late Bernie Mac); puts a strain on lovelorn Melman's pining for Gloria; and introduces Marty to hundreds who look and talk just like him. Eventually, it's up to the quartet of newcomers to head upstream into the unprotected wilderness beyond the animal preserve and determine why the life-giving river providing water has dried up.

It's not much of a plot, but that shouldn't be a surprise. Madagascar 2 isn't about story, so its combination of elements from The Lion King, Finding Nemo, and Joe Versus the Volcano represents the maximum narrative density one could reasonably expect from this movie. For Madagascar 2 to work, you have to really like the characters. And, while the vocal work of Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith is outstanding, Ben Stiller and David Schwimmer are dull and anonymous. The anonymity isn't a problem - many of Disney's classic animated characters were voiced by unknowns - but the lifelessness is.

The soundtrack features "More than a Feeling" by Boston and "Copacabana" by Barry Manilow, as well as playful snippets of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "Born Free", and "New York, New York." So there's music, but this isn't a return to the Disney-style animated musicals of the '90s. The humor is, for the most part, geared toward children, with the occasional double-entendre designed to go over the heads of younger viewers. As was the case with the first film, the penguins get all the best lines. One suspects the film would have been more entertaining had it concentrated on them, just as the Ice Age movies would work better if they focused on the misadventures of the sabertooth squirrel.

It's hard for me to generate much enthusiasm for or against Madagascar 2. It is what it is and it will absorb entertainment-thirsty families the way a parched sponge sucks up water. It's an adequate way to spend 90 minutes with the family and, seen from that perspective, it achieves its aims. However, this is not the kind of animated movie that provides a rich, fulfilling experience for solo, adult viewer. As such, it is more properly labeled a "children's movie" than a "family film." And, like many such films that target less discriminating viewers, it's as forgettable as it is disposable.