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Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
R1 - America - Dreamworks Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (14th March 2009). |
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The Film
 Sometimes I feel inadequate as a film reviewer. I feel we’ve bonded over these past reviews, dear reader, and so I think it’s time we did a little bit of a persona chat, I’m going to open up and let you know how I feel. When I look at the back of some of these DVD’s for the little blurbs, I realized I’ve been making a fatal mistake: Apparently I don’t use enough exclamation points. I know we all can’t be as pun-ful or eloquent as Gene Shalit’s review of “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” (2008): “It’s time for a good time!” What wit. How Articulate. What an exclamation point. It seems like every reviewer on the back of the film managed to slip a few exclamation points into their review, which to me says, wow this must be so exciting for the writer to turn to exclamation points to get their point across. Then I look at my punctuation and just think, wow. What an Eeyore. But now that I get my shot at “Madgascar 2” I think it’s finally time to bust out some crazy punctuation. It’s time to really make my move on that dot with a line above it. How’s this: “‘Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa;’ Not really worth my time!” Picking up where “Madagascar” (2005) left off, the film begins with Alex (Ben Stiller), Marty (Chris Rock), Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman (David Schwimmer) trying to leave Madagascar and return to their home in New York. The Penguins have managed to put together a plane to return them home, but after a launch in a giant slingshot the plane manages to crash land in the middle of an African Wildlife reserve, coincidentally the very same reserve where Alex was born. Soon Alex has reunited with his father Zuba (Bernie Mac) who is leader of the Pride, while Marty joins a heard of Zebras who all look and sound exactly like him, Melman becomes the witchdoctor of the local group of Zebras, while Gloria joins a bloat of hippos. Unfortunately, Zuba’s reign over the pride is has constantly been challenged by Makunga (Alec Baldwin) and now that Alex has returned Makunga sees an opening to usurp Zuba’s power and take over the pride for himself. Its like “The Lion King” (1994) with less comedy, drama or interest in the story. Instead of plot, there are gags, instead of James Earl Jones as Mufasa there’s Bernie Mac in one of his final two roles and instead of Scar, there’s Alec Baldwin as an evil Fonz/greaser/rocker lion with a huge pompadour. While there’s a large grouping of great stand-up and sketch comedians, many of the typical hilarious material of the likes of Rock, Mac or Sacha Baron Cohen are so far outside of the family friendly arena that their comedic talents fall fairly flat. It’s hard to even say there were too many funny moments in the film as I never really became interested in the film at all to crack a smile with the jokes, though I can definitely seeing younger children getting incredibly engaged and interested in the film. From an animation perspective there are some fairly good technical points that work out well between the rendering of the grass or the hairs on their characters, but nothing is shockingly good or a huge jump from a technical perspective. There are some good sunsets and some good scenes of large clusters of animals, but the fact that they seem to keep invoking “The Lion King” intentionally or unintentionally, reminds me of what a more inspiring effort “The Lion King” presented in terms of animation for it’s time. Overall, I’m fully ready to acknowledge I’m not in the target audience for “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” though it would have been nice for them to make a broader appeal. Some of the jokes and comedy try to reach to include the older audience, but fall flat. Some of the sequences tries at comedy just turn out to be annoying more than anything else. The animation looks good, but it draws so many comparisons to “The Lion King” it draws so much attention to the more caricatured designs of “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” that it downplays the quality.
Video
Presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic aspect ratio the film itself has a good transfer considering it’s a CG animated movie and thus there’s less concerns about the digital transfer. Of course the film will end up looking better in a high definition format, but for the standard definition transfer it still stays very clear and lacks any major flaws in the transfer, but the animation itself ranges from great to unimpressive.
Audio
There's audio in English, French or Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound track as well as in English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround on the film. The 5.1 track sounds good and brings through a lot Hans Zimmer and Will.I.Am’s score well. Technically the sound moves well and the levels come through fine, though the soundtrack itself has it’s moments it doesn’t always match the scene in terms of scope and presentation. There is also English, Spanish and French subtitles.
Extras
The film is a 2-disc set, packaged in 2 separate amray cases similar to “Kung Fu Panda” (2008) set, featuring an audio commentary, a large amount of featurettes, 2 bonus short films, some music videos and a jukebox as well as interactive games and bonus trailers. DISC ONE: First up is the audio commentary with directors/co-writers Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath and producers Mireille Soira and Mark Swift, where they do a little bit of talking about the production in terms of storyboarding the movie, along with visits to Africa that they used as visual inspiration for the film, however there’s a lot of awkward pauses between conversations on the degree of difficulty of different scenes or praising the different actors that it gets a bit frustrating and disinteresting. “It’s a Family Affair: The Cast of Escape 2 Africa” featurette runs for 9 minutes and 10 seconds, featuring talking head interviews with the primary cast members as well as showing some behind-the-scenes showing them voicing their charcters, though noticeably there’s no appearances by Sacha Baron Cohen despite being talked about all the time. Of course there’s some talk in memoriam of Bernie Mac but it kind of gets lost in the midst of the clip. “The Making of Escape 2 Africa” runs for 11 minutes and 2 seconds. This featurette covers the general making-of territory, dealing with how the story was conceived interspliced with clips of the film along with some glances of storyboarding and animation. It’s a fairly standard feature that goes through with the production, from the animators and producers safari in Africa along with the different aspects of the animation and production. They bring up a lot of the same points that they made in the commentary, as well as dealing with some of the same points that other people have brought up even in other sections of the featurette. “Crash Landing” runs for 3 minutes and 37 seconds. Here, the featurette covers just the plane crash sequence in terms of the production, going from storyboarding through the different artists playing and acting out the scene in order to get a better of idea of how the scene would work out. It’s interesting to see how much of their playing around goes into the final cut of the film and to see a brief look at how the production works in fairly nonstandard ways, though there’s surprisingly less emphasis on the technical aspect of the production. “African Adventure” runs for 7 minutes and 16 seconds. This featurette acts as a more generic documentary of the department heads’ trip to Africa and their safari. They cover a lot of the same ground from the making-of and the commentary talking about how beautiful Africa is, along with some actual footage of what Africa looks like and how some of the areas they visited turned into digital locations for the film. “Jambo Jambo: Swahili speak” runs for 1 minute and 42 seconds. This featurette just goes through some fairly general words like hello or goodnight in Swahilli, but it’s a bit odd to have it placed in the film considering there was little to no Swahili in the film itself. After watching the brief sequence that has clips from the film, there are short clips for different phrases translated into Swahili that are just accompanied by a short clip, each runs for about 10 seconds and includes: - “What Goes Up, Must Come Down” - “Better Late than Never” - “Love is Blind” - “Where There’s A Will, There’s A Way” - “To Live Long is to See Much” - “The Child of a Lion is a Lion” - “Blessings are better than Wealth” - “A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed” “Test Flight of the Air Penguin Game” is an interactive game where the viewer chooses parts to use to keep the plane form crashing using the remote. “Mad Music” is a collection of music videos from the film, listed below: - “Move it, Move it” runs for 2 minutes and 46 seconds. - “Big and Chunky” runs for 1 minute and 4 seconds. - “She Loves Me” runs for 1 minute and 22 seconds. - “Traveling Song’ Sing Along” runs for 1 minute and 30 seconds. Also is the “Dreamworks Animation Jukebox” is a collection of different music clips from different films, listed below: - “Shrek – I’m a Believer” - “Kung Fu Panda – Kung Fu Fighting” - “Bee Movie – Here Comes the Sun” - “Shrek the Third – Losing Streak” - “Flushed Away – Dancing With Myself” - “Over the Hedge – Rockin’ The Suburbs (Over the Hedge Version)” - “Madagascar – I Like to Move it, Move it” - “Shark Tale – Car Wash (Shark Tale Mix)” - “Shrek 2 – Livin’ La Vida Loca” There are bonus trailers for: - “Monsters Vs. Aliens” runs for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. - “Secrets of the Furious Five” runs for 1 minute and 5 seconds. - “The Penguins of Madagascar” runs for 35 seconds. - “Madagascar” runs for 35 seconds. - “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" video game runs for 1 minute and 3 seconds. - “Hotel for Dogs” runs for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. DISC TWO: 
First is “The Penguins of Madagascar,” apparently an upcoming show for Nickelodeon, which presents two of the shorts on the disc. The animation looks incredibly stiff and rubbery across the episodes, making the animation of the film itself look incredible. The transition from high budget CG animation to drastically lower budget CG would have been less shocking if they had just gone for traditional animation. The two shorts included are: - “Popcorn Panic” runs for 12 minutes and 5 seconds. The Penguins and the other animals around the zoo are craving some of the popcorn that’s being passed out. Julien and the Penguins come into conflict over the best way to achieve their goal of popcorn. - “Gone in a Flash” runs for 12 minutes and 6 seconds. Maurice keeps on trying to relax while singing out each of his little actions, while Julien keeps on interfering, until Julien takes a picture and accidentally thinks he has trapped Maurice in the Camera. “The Heart of a Lion” runs for 11 minutes and 56 seconds. This featurette looks at a region of Tanzania in the form of a nature documentary, dealing with the weather, the family relationships and the lion’s eating habits. “The Bronx Zoo: Madagascar” runs for 8 minutes and 14 seconds. This featurette deals with a new exhibit at the Bronx Zoo called Madagascar, going through the construction of the exhibit within the historic lion house, as well as the different animals that live within the exhibit. Throughout the featurette are a few pop-up facts about the different parts of the documentary or animals, each with a springing noise, though informative, the sound itself gets annoying after a little while. “Mad Activites” are a collection of DVD-ROM features including: - A set of printable items - Weblinks - Mini-game based on “Escape 2 Africa” - “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" demo video game “Alex’s Dance off” featurette runs for 3 minutes and 17 seconds runs through the different moves that alex uses throughout the film for viewers to dance along with and see some short clips of the dance moves that Alex uses in the film.
Overall
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