I wrote a scathing review of Shark's Tale a while back, and since I've not heard great things about Madagascar either I can only conclude that this movie confirms my suspicions: Dreamworks and Fox don't know what they're doing in the story or character departments.
I can not deny the technical achievements for the animation - I'm sure the studio was wetting itself with excitement at some of the fluid and particle dynamics we witness in this one - but a movie should have an original story... and this one just doesn't! It's a brain-deadening revisit to the preaching, simplistic, moralistic "inspirational" tales I hated even when I was a kid myself. It uses every cliché in the book: hard-up young kid has a dream, goes to the big city, gets knocked down by evil rich guy, loses hope, friends inspire hope, guy rouses crowd, evil guy exposed, etc. etc. etc.
No spoiler warning here, since there is nothing to spoil - you have seen variations on this cheesy theme a hundred thousand times already. As with Shark's Tale and Shrek 2 there is nothing original in here to keep me the slightest bit interested! Added to the unoriginality are the jarring and un-funny "funny" bits, which mostly consist of things getting damaged in ballistic manner... complete with rapid shouting, explosive sound effects and "funny" music. Don't get me wrong, I managed to smile once or twice, but most of the time I was just feeling numb to it.
Cases in point: what is funny about a fight being interrupted by a two-second Britney Spears impersonation?!? If there a *reason* for it to happen (or it happens when it *shouldn't*) then it could be amusing, but this just made me think "why? so what?". Another one is a robot saying "the Force is strong in this one" for no apparent reason... they build it up in its own short scene, and my reaction is... "was that it?".
Randomly throwing in pop-culture references doesn't make any sense when they have nothing to do with anything! An unexpected in-character or out-of-character phrase or action can be funny. Sudden changes in events or plot revelation can be funny. On the other hand, someone turning on a light-switch and saying "make it so" is not. If it's important that the light is switched on, there's been a nice build-up in the dramatic tension, and "make it so" is unexpected given the situation or the character saying it (or is some clever reference to Star Trek that fits the moment)... then that's a different matter.
I may have made that one up, but it's at the level I'm talking about here.
So, add to that the rather unattractive robot designs, generally uninteresting characters and dialogue drowned out by music and sound effects - it's pretty poor. Saved only by the good animation.
I can not deny the technical achievements for the animation - I'm sure the studio was wetting itself with excitement at some of the fluid and particle dynamics we witness in this one - but a movie should have an original story... and this one just doesn't! It's a brain-deadening revisit to the preaching, simplistic, moralistic "inspirational" tales I hated even when I was a kid myself. It uses every cliché in the book: hard-up young kid has a dream, goes to the big city, gets knocked down by evil rich guy, loses hope, friends inspire hope, guy rouses crowd, evil guy exposed, etc. etc. etc.
No spoiler warning here, since there is nothing to spoil - you have seen variations on this cheesy theme a hundred thousand times already. As with Shark's Tale and Shrek 2 there is nothing original in here to keep me the slightest bit interested! Added to the unoriginality are the jarring and un-funny "funny" bits, which mostly consist of things getting damaged in ballistic manner... complete with rapid shouting, explosive sound effects and "funny" music. Don't get me wrong, I managed to smile once or twice, but most of the time I was just feeling numb to it.
Cases in point: what is funny about a fight being interrupted by a two-second Britney Spears impersonation?!? If there a *reason* for it to happen (or it happens when it *shouldn't*) then it could be amusing, but this just made me think "why? so what?". Another one is a robot saying "the Force is strong in this one" for no apparent reason... they build it up in its own short scene, and my reaction is... "was that it?".
Randomly throwing in pop-culture references doesn't make any sense when they have nothing to do with anything! An unexpected in-character or out-of-character phrase or action can be funny. Sudden changes in events or plot revelation can be funny. On the other hand, someone turning on a light-switch and saying "make it so" is not. If it's important that the light is switched on, there's been a nice build-up in the dramatic tension, and "make it so" is unexpected given the situation or the character saying it (or is some clever reference to Star Trek that fits the moment)... then that's a different matter.
I may have made that one up, but it's at the level I'm talking about here.
So, add to that the rather unattractive robot designs, generally uninteresting characters and dialogue drowned out by music and sound effects - it's pretty poor. Saved only by the good animation.