ANI-MOVIES, *Madagascar

After Schrek became a mainstay for DreamWorks, they were looking for their next cinematic franchise. In 2005, the first Madagascar film was put in theaters to a rising victory. Even though it's an original story, the concept borrowed quite a bit from various classic cartoons, specifically Tennessee Tuxedo and Hair Bair Bunch, plus plenty of callbacks to Looney Tunes. The conceprt was about zoo animals ending up in the wild, which turned out to be such an original idea that a year later Disney came out with their own hideously animated movie titled The Wild. The characters have a specific angular design to them which is a fresh take instead of trying to make them match an established motif. One thing that the film keeps dragging its feet over is the constant barrage of pop culture references, and the soundtrack is littered with incidental jukebox music. However, as an animated family film, it does reach what it's going for.

A quartet of animals at the Central Park Zoo in New York City are all buddies who despite whatever natural tendencies they have are all friends. The lion Alex is the zoo's star attraction, and his neighbors Gloria the hippo, Melman the giraffe, along with zebra Marty whose 10th birthday makes him wish to see what life is like outside the zoo. After four penguins plan to bust out of their captive habitat, Marty gets the idea to also go see the great wild world, so he takes a stroll out on the town, with his friends chasing after him which gets them all deported. The penguins take control of the freighter which lands the main characters on the coast of Madagascar, thus finally living up to the movie's title. After being greeted by a tribe of lemurs lead by the charismatic King Julien, the zoo castaways decide to stay, although this new change of scenery doesn't help Alex's carnivore cravings. The penguins eventually turn the freighter around to Madagascar and help introduce Alex to seafood which cures his want to eat his friends and seeing everyone as talking steaks. They all plan to head back to New York, although the film ends with no functioning ship to make the journey home, so that's where the sequels come in.

Madagascar lives up to its name for the second half of the movie, although it could've been titled something a little closer to the story like Zoo Break. The casting is on point, even if most of the actors were high profile stars at the time this came out instead of standard voice over veterans. The film contains vibrant animation, although the human designs look like rejected background characters from the first Incredibles movie. The entire film is an homage to spastic golden age cartoons in the spirit of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, so old school toon fans should appreciate it, and it's a great film for kids.