This Week's Hot Pick: 'Madagascar'

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

This zippy comedy about New York zoo animals sent off to live in the wilds combined old-fashioned Looney Tunes style with computer animation to produce a major summer hit.

The DVD comes with commentaries from the hilarious quartet of penguins whose planned zoo escape sets the story in motion, and from the filmmakers, a new music video, technical goofs, writer/directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath's making-of explanations and plenty of games and interactive projects.

Showbiz lion Alex (voice of Ben Stiller), the merchandised-to-the-mane king of the Central Park Zoo, loves living in the Big Apple, while his best friend, Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), longs for the legendary open plains.

When Marty escapes to sample the wild (of Connecticut), the ensuing city adventure of Alex and his buddies, Melman the hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), is misinterpreted as a cry for escape, the furthest thing from their minds. Shipped off to an animal preserve in Kenya, they wind up (due to the "Great Escape" shenanigans of the penguins) washing ashore in Madagascar.

Alex is no predator, he's a ham who lives for the spotlight, but he succumbs to his primal instincts in the wild (the marvelously animated sequences suggest a giant housecat in the feral fever of play) and his best friends start to look an awful lot like dinner on the hoof. It's the film's basic conflict -- instinct versus individual choice.

Slim on plot but fat with furiously paced gags, "Madagascar" is a routine story enlivened by location, color, exotic landscapes and a cascade of comic flourishes. For adults, there's a non-stop barrage of cultural references. For kids, there are a smattering of pooh jokes and slapstick gags, all directed with zany energy. 86 minutes. Rated PG for mild language, crude humor and some thematic elements. (Sean Axmaker)

GRADE: B+