Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (**½)

Directed by: Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath
Starring (Voices): Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer, Sacha Baron Cohen, Bernie Mac, Alec Baldwin
Seen: December 20th 2008

**½ Out of ****

Just like Madagascar entertained us without changing our worlds, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (E2A) brings the laughs, the friendship, the interesting ideas and the fact that our world won’t be chaged after watching it. But it is slightly brighter for at least a while.

The story of E2A sandwiches that of the first film, showing us firstly how Alex (Stiller) came to be in the New York Zoo after being kidnapped as a cub while his father Zuba (Mac) was fighting Makunga (Baldwin), lost by the poachers when Zuba pursued them, and ended up floating across the ocean to New York. So it seems to me that this story was originally planned in this way, or if not, it is written quite well to fit in with the whole Madagascar saga.

Back to the present time, Alex, Gloria (Pinkett Smith), Melman (Schwimmer), Marty (Rock), the chimpanzees, King Julien (Cohen), Maurice and the penguins are still on Madagascar, but they are headed back to New York. The penguins have fixed a crashed plane, to a fashion, and instead of a runway, they are catapulting the plane from a platform built in a massive tree, which also serves as the farewell party location. As expected though, penguins can’t really “fix” a plane, and they miraculously make it across the ocean, but crash land in Africa.

In Africa multiple surprises await the troupe: more of their own kind, long-lost family, tribal challenges and unexpected romance. Marty falls in with a herd of Zebra who all look, act and talk exactly like he does, and he disappears into the multitude where Alex has trouble recognising him, and he has trouble adapting to the identity paradigm shift this presents him with. The hypochondriac Melman finds a position as a witch doctor, and also wallows in his own sickness, believing he is going to die. Gloria is approached by Moto Moto, a “dream-hippo” who also seems pretty stupid, while Melman starts thinking he’ll lose Gloria forever.

All these stories are told as side dishes to the main of Alex’s family discovery and tribal initiation challenges, which he fails, and subsequently gets banished for. Now it’s up to the friends to get Alex back into his tribe, and along the way they are threatened by a group of tough New Yorkers, who, after getting stranded when the penguins stole their vehicles, form a primitive civilisation.

One particularly entertaining storyline involves the penguins yet again trying to fix the plane using parts of the stolen vehicles and a massive amount of chimpanzees. The chimpanzees go on strike and there are even quite amusing wage negotiations.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is a very smartly made animation film. It offers something for everyone, frantic vibrant colour and funny situations for the kids, and witty real life parodies for those in the audience who are a bit older too.