Much like how people raised their eyebrows when Disney and DreamWorks battled each other with the same ideas and concepts with A Bug’s Life and Antz, very similar feelings were felt when in 2005, the movie Madagascar was released from DreamWorks, only for Disney to follow it up with The Wild the following year. Both movies centred around animals with sentient thoughts being shipped away from a zoo to an isolated island that is much more violent than what they’re used to, coming across crazy animals and situations and having to decide whether or not this life is what they’re looking for. Not surprisingly, neither film did very well critically but while The Wild was quickly forgotten about, Madagascar left a particular cord with kids and managed to survive with a trilogy and a spin-off franchise. Set in the New York City zoo, a zebra named Marty (voiced by Chris Rock) wishes to escape his confinements and go to the wild, even against the wishes of his friends; Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), a sassy hippo named Gloria (voiced by Jada Pinkett Smith) and a neurotic giraffe named Melman (voiced by David Schwimmer). After a series of unfortunate events, all four are caught and shipped off to Africa, but they get thrown overboard and wind up on the lemur-infested island of Madagascar. Stuck without civilisation, the four have to band together and wait for help to come or embrace their new surrounds, even to the point of the lion losing himself to his carnivorous tendencies. From trailers, type of humor and concept alone, this movie could look pretty dumb and predictable on a first viewing experience. It’s a movie that is garnered much more to a younger audience in style and comedy, but with the addition edge and cast of an adult film (something that DreamWorks is usually known for). Thankfully, upon visiting it, the movie does feature enough laughs, pretty imagery, good voice acting and a not so standard story that it saves itself pretty well.

The idea of animals talking and acting like humans was not a unique idea even back then, and even the voice cast’s energy and adult -way of talking was already being done by Pixar and other animated movies. From the beginning of the movie, the story seems to be going down a very predictable route; a character wants to go somewhere else, a group gets stuck in a dangerous unknown place, they’re deemed heroes by accident and are treated like gods, etc. With that concept, it would be easy to write this movie off as another forgettable kids movie with a standard story, but during the last third of the film it takes a much more interesting route; whether or not the lion will give into his savage instincts and start eating his friends. That’s a vastly more interesting direction and something that hadn’t been done at that point, it uses the environment and the characters much more effectively than what it was originally thought to be setting up. Even before that change, the movie doesn’t feel as controlled by its clichés than other movies of its type; it still tries to be a comedy first and that arguably helps it in the long run, leaving the story not as developed so that this change later on can happen in a flowing way. Without this addition, the movie wouldn’t have had much to stand on, but with it, it takes in it in a unique direction and surprise kids and even adults in a good way.

The voice cast for the film definitely had influence on how their characters would act. Since the casting list for this movie is surprisingly small (featuring only about 10 – 20 people), you can feel how the characters have very similar attributes and elements from the people that are voicing them, allowing them to stay as themselves and essentially work as type for the whole film. With the stylised animation design, the positions that each character gets into in the film, and even how each line is delivered feels like it was tailored made for these actors alone. Because of this, everyone comes out of this giving a pretty good performance; Chris Rock is nice and energetic, Ben Stiller gets some good moments near the end of the film, David Schwimmer does a surprisingly good job, Jada Pinkett Smith gets into it pretty well, Sacha Baron Cohen is clearly having a lot of fun, and the Penguins provide some of the best moments of the film. While the comedy for each of them is pretty selective and won’t really entertain many adults, it works pretty well for kids in that it can come across as pretty childish, but it has a tiny bit of an edge that works in its favour.

The animation for the movie goes for a more interesting look at its character designs than other movies coming out at the time. The characters do have some striking similarities to the real-life actors which means while they are very definable, they can also look a little off in moments. It never gets too distracting as the models are still expressive, mobile and work in the 3D environment really well. The color scheme for this movie is very bright and very atmospheric; it captures the mood and essence of a scene very well with the lighting and background work. It uses it 3D environment to not only set a scene’s atmosphere, but it also works well in the comedy aspect too. The writing for this film can be a bit all over the place and its hard to determine what style it’s trying to go for; sometimes its heavily referential, other times it’s incredibly heavy on physical comedy, sometimes its very wordy and fast, it can go from amazingly childish to amazingly dark in a matter of seconds, and it could so quickly be quiet and subtle as it is loud and in your face. Its difficult to find out which person this type of comedy bingo would work for, but most of those elements do lead to some legitimately good laughs. It has the typical pop culture, low brow stuff that comes with the territory, but with ever joke that doesn’t work, it’s usually followed by one that does work.

Madagascar was the film that while critically a failure, was highly successful at the box office and was one of the biggest selling movies of 2005. The surprise doesn’t just stop there; the film actually turns out to be decently entertaining, well-acted, colourfully animated and funny enough that it makes sense it lasted as long as it did. It definitely has its fair share of issues that hold it back from being a great movie, but for an early DreamWorks movie, it delivers much more than people would have expected it to. Proving once and for all that DreamWorks seems to handle trilogies very well, Madagascar is a wild ride with plenty for kids and enough for adults to get into.