Movie Review - Where The Wild Things Are
Tame Madagascar fails to captivate
There’s a dog-eat-dog rivalry between computer animation filmmakers Pixar and DreamWorks. In their decade-long grudge match, each studio has honed its own natural defenses.
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With likes of the Toy Story movies and The Incredibles, Pixar mines witty premises for rich characters. DreamWorks, with the Shrek series and its latest effort, Madagascar, depends on fame and familiarity.
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DreamWorks casts more famous actors for voices, such as Ben Stiller and Chris Rock in Madagascar. The settings spoof famous places, like Shrek’s Disneyworld and Hollywood, or Madagascar’s Manhattan. And the humor relies, at times exclusively, on jokes about famous films and other pop-culture milestones. Antz and Shark Tale offered animal-based parodies of, respectively, Woody Allen and modern mafia movies.
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Short-term, DreamWorks takes the safer route. No one will miss Madagascar’s gags about “New York, New York” or TV theme songs. But since computer animation takes forever to finish, time-sensitive jokes expire by the time they reach the multiplex. Though brand new, Madagascar feels stale, and its most clever ideas play second banana to tired, TV-friendly shtick.
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Stiller’s Alex the Lion is literally a celebrity. He’s the mobbed main attraction of the Central Park Zoo. Raised in captivity, Alex loves zoo life, though his best friend, Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), yearns to taste freedom. Marty uncovers a chance to break out via a commando squad of penguins who steal Madagascar’s every scene (but prove just a shadow of Finding Nemo’s escape-oriented aquarium fish).
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Joined by a sassy hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and a hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer), Alex and Marty wander loose in New York, then get shipped overseas and finally shipwrecked off Africa’s coast, on the island of Madagascar.
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Freed from predictable comedy about Manhattan life, Madagascar begins to catch fire in the wild. The computer-animated jungle blazes with candy colors, especially when its lemur population throws a rave, led by none-too-bright King Julian. Sacha Baron Cohen - better known by his alter ego, faux hip-hop prankster Ali G - gives Julian a honeyed Afro-Caribbean patois and an amusing self-importance.
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Next to Cohen, Schwimmer provides the funniest voice work with the giraffe’s adenoidal complaints and jungle hissy fits: “Nature! It’s all over me! Get it off!” Stiller makes Alex cluelessly enthusiastic, but never provides a memorable performance. Any comic or actor with a prime-time sitcom could have fared as well. Rock’s gift for savage, sarcastic ire finds no outlet in Marty. The film comes closest to a racial acknowledgment when the zebra wonders if he’s black with white strips or vice versa.
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The script dances around a joke about domesticated beasts struggling to adjust to their original habitat, not unlike pampered celebrities trying to fend for themselves free of handlers. But Madagascar never exploits the setup, since Marty and company prove as resourceful as the cast of “Gilligan’s Island,” which makes no sense in or out of context.
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But when Alex becomes increasingly ravenous, Madagascar finally finds a hook. Raised on hand-delivered pre-sliced steaks, Alex associates his best pal as potential prey for the first time. The script finally finds a premise to sink its fangs into: Alex hallucinates that his friends are talking T-bones and sees his claws pop uncontrollably, like he’s a leonine Jekyll and Hyde.
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Madagascar’s best pop jokes spring from the situation, like the recurring use of the Born Free theme, or Alex dreaming of meat falling like the rose petals in American Beauty’s fantasies. Movies overuse Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” but it suits an ironic montage of the zoo animals aghast at the violence in the circle of life.
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Yet Alex’s kill-or-starve dilemma never pays off any more than Madagascar’s tension between cushy urban life and unfettered rural life. Until DreamWorks’ films begin showing some teeth, the studio will continue to occupy a lower rung on the computer-animated food chain.