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just read a review on Globeandmail.com
**/5 - thats a pretty bad rating. Not sure if he is right, but its worth a read i think:
Source
| quote: | Amid the bits and bytes of computer animation, there's a power struggle going on, with the opposing forces all mobilized around a single question: Just how much eye-popping realism do you want in a cartoon? Those wizardly machines now have the ability to make Mickey look and move like an actual rodent, but the animator who treads too far down that path runs the risk of defeating his entire purpose. At what point does a verisimilitudinous Mickey lose his big-eared charm? When that clicking computer mouse starts to overzealously imitate its squeaking namesake, the imagination gets hard-wired right out of the picture.
It's a curious paradox, an echo of the general trend in the special-effects industry, where technology makes the fantastic appear real but, in the process, seems to shrink the very idea of fantasy. Ironically, perhaps, kiddie movies have a greater vested interest than their so-called adult counterparts in grappling with this dilemma. You can see the tension in children's animation, as some pictures fast-track along the road to visual realism, while others beat a calculated retreat. In the Shrek films, for example, that donkey may jabber away like Eddie Murphy, but its look is pure pack animal. Convince it to shut up, and the beast could pull double duty as an extra in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Not so in Madagascar. Here, the stylized critters have taken a step back toward the exaggerated conventions of cartoon-land. This is an animated feature with a Saturday-morning look. Unfortunately, it's also got a Saturday-morning script — that is, a wafer-thin yarn that might have done Sylvester and Tweety proud, but goes missing-in-action when stretched over 80-plus minutes.
So the four principal creatures — Alex the show-off lion (the voice of Ben Stiller), Marty the restless zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the no-nonsense hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) — all cut a reassuringly retro figure. Sure, the computer still insists on strutting its stuff, giving a sinuous credibility to the curve of a neck, the flick of a tail, the ripple of fur. But their overall look is quirky and cutesy, comic enough to keep the wild safely out of the kingdom.
Initially, that look dovetails neatly with the story, which is essentially just a variation on the city mouse/country mouse staple. The four are a pampered quartet housed in the Central Park Zoo, where they're living an American Dream that most Americans can only dream of — comfortable shelter, nutritious food, free medical care and a small army of man-servants to clean up their mess. All's heavenly, until Marty, suffering from a midlife crisis, gets bitten by the adventure-travel bug. Seems he wants to go see the jungle, to trek into the heart of darkness.
Inadvertently aided by a feisty group of meddlesome penguins (fifth business, yet they provide the flick with its only belly laugh), Marty soon gets his wish. He and his pals find themselves on an ocean liner sailing to exotic ports. But when the ship runs out of steam, so does the story, at about the point when the stars tumble overboard only to wash up on the island shores of Madagascar. First impressions, theirs and ours, are bad: The greeting party is a colony of lemurs whose king (Sacha Baron Cohen) seems to think he's Peter Sellers in The Party. Same accent, different result: just a funny voice with nothing remotely funny to say.
Beyond that, there's a moment of panic when a hungry Alex, his claws growing and his roar deepening, flirts with a dark side that is beginning to regard old buddy Marty less as his main man than his main course. But the writers, having introduced this notion of the not-so-noble savage, turn all cowardly lion on us, and the raised theme gets quickly dropped. Don't worry, children — Alex's carnivorous moment passes like the gas it is.
So, lest anything disturbing happens, nothing much happens at all. Even the usual split-level humour — ground-floor slapstick for the kids, second-storey banter for their parents — seems architecturally askew. The grown-up jokes ("Look, free mints," enthuses Melman after a visit to the men's urinals) have a lumpy and dated feel, more like a night in the Catskills than an evening with The Simpsons.
Yes, credit Madagascar with negotiating a hopeful truce in the ongoing battle between the computer and the animation. Judged merely by appearances, its look is a lovely compromise. Too bad everything else has been compromised right out of existence.
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Can't wait 
