3 stars***
Often a franchise fails on its second showing; The Madagascar collection grows in stature as the film progresses and with a third in mind, the audience will already be queuing for a ticket. You may consider that its core audience will be two years older when the trilogy completes and may have moved on, but the master plan is that with each child attending the cinema, one or two parents come along as well, partly to pay for the popcorn and soda, but mainly because the films are so well made.
This Madagascar is the sequel to the first from 2005. It again has a string of stars performing the voices, but however good they are, I again wonder why we need star names to attract an audience to this movie when complete unknowns could have performed adequately and wouldn’t have taken anything away from the film. It wasn’t until I saw the credits that I found out who those well paid stars were and it wasn’t easy then to think back and put a voice to an animated character.
While the plot may be thin (it needs to be for its young audience) it makes up for that in structure and substance. The audience connects with the characters; they become real on the screen. We go with them and worry when they have trouble. We cheer when they succeed.
You can see where they’ve spent the budget of $150million. The action on the screen is the best seen for this genre: I wonder if it will look dated in twenty year’s time? The original Madagascar cost half as much but attracted over $500 million at the box office and no doubt almost as much in DVD sales. Escape to Africa looks set to surpass those figures.
I dare them to try and save a few million by using quality unknown actors for the voices, but I guess the stars already have signed contracts for Madagascar 3. Wouldn’t you?
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