The original trailor for this movie was strange. It featured Ben Stiller decribing the characters and then pointing out some of the plot points. With such a bizarre trailor, I wasn't sure as to how good the movie would be, thankfully I was happily surprised.

Stiller plays Alex the lion who is the king of the Central Park Zoo in New York. He is so domesticated that he is best friends with a Zebra called Marty (Chris Rock), a hippo called Gloria (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and a Giraffe called Melman (David Schwimmer). When Marty goes out for a night on the town, his friend's naturally go to find him. When they get cornered in Grand Central Station, the humans don't seem to understand their explanation and ship them off to africa.

The Penguins, however, have no intention of going to Africa and successfully hijack the boat. Unfortunately four crates fall off the boat and wash up on the shores of Madagascar...

This film was hilarious and was far better than I had expected. Schwimmer did a wonderful job as the neurotic Giraffe, with Stiller and Rock ably fulfilling their roles too. It was good to see the wild side of Alex coming out slowly as he realised reluctantly that if he were to survive then some of his friends probably wouldn't.

The penguins were, obviously, the best characters in this movie, although the monkeys also had their moments. One to take the kids to!

see also:
Aladdin, Toy Story 3, Over the hedge, The Incredibles

User rating: 5 (1 votes) [rate this movie] [official site]
photo © Dreamworks.