The Madagascar film
series has been, for me, a hit after hit. The animation is well-tuned, making
you fall in love with the characters’ movements, and the scripts are packed
with humor without holding back.
It’s hard to think of the country Madagascar without the movie coming to mind.
It packs a punch with memorable characters like the Penguins, with their 007/Mission
Impossible-style antics, and the egotistical King Julien XIII, whose voice I
can’t forget in a hurry and whose role is too weird to overlook.
The animation’s
lead characters are a lion (Alex), a zebra (Marty), a giraffe (Melman), and a
hippopotamus (Gloria). Funny enough, in the movie, it’s everyone else who adds
to the fun—the leads are there to guide us through the journey where the fun
happens.
The four animals live in the Central Park Zoo, and the plot kicks off with them
celebrating Marty’s tenth birthday. Marty mentions to his friends that he’s
grown bored with his daily routine. He wants to break free from captivity and
experience the wild.
Alex, Marty’s best friend, tries to talk him out of it and cheer him up, but
Marty’s mind is set on anything that involves escaping the zoo.
Marty meets the
Penguins, who are already planning their escape to Antarctica. He overhears
their plan and follows them—Skipper, Kowalski, Rico, and Private—out of the
zoo.
Alex, Melman, and Gloria go after Marty to convince him to return, but their
efforts only make the breakout more intense, and they all get caught. Some
animal activists, believing the animals escaped because they wanted freedom,
pressure the zoo to release them.
The animals are then placed in crates and shipped to the Kenyan wildlife game
reserve. On the ship, a fight breaks out between Marty and Alex, while the
Penguins take over the ship. During the chaos, the crates carrying the four
friends (Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria) fall overboard and wash up in
Madagascar.
Meanwhile, the
Penguins sail the ship to Antarctica.
The movie
garnered mixed reviews, as did the other films in the franchise that followed.
However, it’s been a successful series, especially with the first Madagascar film.
The last film, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012), had the
highest critical approval and made the most money at the box office in the
entire franchise.
The other movies in the franchise include Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012). A spin-off movie
featuring the Penguins, Penguins of Madagascar, was released in 2014.
As of 2018, the future of this franchise is in limbo, which is sad because I truly enjoyed it. The movies, spin-offs, and TV series it spawned have all been funny and enjoyable.
0 comments:
Post a Comment