MADAGASCAR 2 ESCAPE TO AFRICA begins with a backstory, the better to set up the forestory of this animated piece. Alex (Ben Stiller), the dancing king of New York, was not always an inhabitant of the Central Park Zoo. Nor was always an inhabitant of the New World, for that matter. No, when he was just a cub, he lived in the wilds of Africa, his father (Bernie Mac) the fearsome king of pride safely ensconced on a game preserve. Alex preferred butterflies, as in chasing. This worried his father, but not as much as when he was tempted off the preserve and, through a series of highly improbable accidents, ended up in New York. That’s where MADAGASCAR 1 found him and then subsequently left him on that eponymous island.
Once the sequel gets up to the present day, Alex and his pals, Melman (David Schwimmer), the hypochondriac giraffe, Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), the sassy hippopotamus, and Marty (Chris Rock), the equally sassy zebra, are getting ready to leave Madagascar for a triumphant return to New York thanks to the psychotic penguins. Last seen, those birds had arrived in Antarctica and didn’t like it, but why they returned to Madagascar rather than retunring directly to New York is never explained. All the better for our quartet of zoo pals, who blithely board the penguin-refurbished plane in hopes of making it back to the good life in Central Park. Alas, though the plane actually does, and against all odds, become airborne, it doesn’t stay that way for long. Instead, it crashes in Africa and not just anywhere in Africa. No, it crashes in Alex’s old haunts, all the better to pull out all the usual tropes of a hero’s journey overlaid with pretty much the same story as MADAGASCAR told, except it adds the special treat of seeing a lemur kitted up as Lawrence of Arabia camping it up while galumphing about on a flamingo.
There’s the longing to be somewhere else. There’s the brush with all the dangers looming outside the zoo, er, preserve. There’s the testing of each animal’s mettle with predicable results. Alex needs to measure up to dad’s expectations, Marty has and identity crisis when he blends a little too well into the zebra herd, Gloria has a brush with love courtesy of the preserve’s hunkiest hippo, and Melman inadvertently discovers of his life’s calling. Fortunately, for all the tired familiarity of the main story, including the new, yet equally tired trope of the scheming beta lion (Alec Baldwin) plotting against Alex’s father, there is the compensation of those fabulously psychotic penguins and the equally fabulous King Julian (voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen with a burbling narcissism), the limber lemur king with a penchant for living his life as one continuous and extravagant Vegas floor show. It is, in fact, Julian who has the single best moment of the flick, teaching a downhearted Melman how to pitch exuberant woo at the oblivious Gloria, for whom the giraffe has been pining since their zoo days. As for the penguins, they’re commando idiom isn’t quite so delusional as it was back in their zoo days, but instead of detracting from the insanity, it makes it that much more piquant as they hijack jeeps full of preserve tourists in order to repair the plane, and the storyline dares to explore the more sentimental, yet equally psychotic, inner life of the commander. The main story has its dashes of delight, though not as satisfying, with the Carmen Miranda hat of shame Alex must sport after botching the tender joy of his family reunion working the best.
Sticky sweet too much of the time, MADAGASCAR 2 ESCAPE TO AFRICA bounces along unevenly though jokes and sentiment that work only most of the time. There is one unassailable asset here that seals the deal: it brings back those penguins. For this, it deserves infinite kudos and enough box office to bring them back for a new adventure.
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