Madagascar 2 : Escape To Africa

Genre : Animation | Comedy
Plot : A group of escaped zoo animals find their way back.

Madagascar 2, 2008

With all the characters remained the same except that in Madagascar 2, they gave King Julian more scripts on screen and it proved to be a wise decision. Don’t be fooled with title “Escaped to Africa” because in actual fact, they did not escape. Here’s how.

The movie started off flashing back some of Alex’s (Lion) past showing his father in Africa and how he got lost and captured by animal poachers and was eventually sold to the Central Park Zoo. Madagascar 2 picks up from Madagascar 1 where the Mafia penguins successfully built a flying vessel believing that it could bring them back to New York but it didn’t, the plane crashed landed in Africa and it would take the penguins 6 to 9 months (constantly being mistakenly heard as 69 months) to rebuild a new one. While the penguins were cracking their bird brain on how to find resources, the rest of them went on and explore the land they were on and they realized they had found a savannah. Each of them went join their own herd while King Julian and his assistant continued their plan on non-hostile takeover of new lands.

Alex was reunited with his parents and named the rightful heir to the Alpha Lion position and in order to do so, Alex first have to be accepted into the herd therefore Alex must pass the coming of age ritual every cubs did to prove themselves worthy. Alex’s father did not brief Alex about the ritual because Alex claimed himself to be the King of New York hence his father thought Alex was invincible. Alex was subsequently banished from the herd after he failed the ritual and his dad gave up the Alpha lion position to an evil senior member of the herd.

Melman (Giraffe) found his own herd and was shock to find out that the savannah, there are no doctors and so whenever anyone fall sick they just dig a hole and die. Melman was so determined that he wants to change the way how things are and through persuasions, he became the savannah’s witch doctor to which he also later expressed his feelings of love towards Gloria (Hippo) after having wrongfully diagnosed with a disease that will kill him in 48hours. Marty (Zebra) always thought that he was unique until he joined his herd and realized that what he can do, the rest can do just as well.

The first installment was named Madagascar because they were trapped in Madagascar but in the 2nd installment, it didn’t make much sense because they are nowhere close to Madagascar. It could be argued that they justified the title through the secondary title to it. Basically, Madagascar 2 is a very entertaining animation to watch. Each character has its own storyline unlike the 1st, everyone just worked towards the same plot.

This Is Mort, he is 35!

Then you have this little lemur who followed King Julian who goes by the name, Mort. King Julian is highly annoyed by him and will do whatever it takes to get rid of him but Mort’s natural reponse is giggling and looking flattered. Mort was hanging outside of the plane all the while until he lost his grip but he appeared again in the middle of the movie with a shark chasing after it and the hilarious part is that the shark chased Mort all the way from the sea into the volcano o_O? Mort’s presence resembles that of Scrat, the Squirrel Rat from Ice Age.

In conclusion, Madagascar 2 is a very good animation but recommendation to watch it in the cinema is optional because there’s nothing in this movie that requires a big screen to bring out the desired effect. Just a feel good family animation movie. Pay attention to all the small details such as facial expressions and minor speeches, those are the killing points. I laughed so loud and almost non-stop watching it that my girlfriend had to cover my mouth just to lower down my voice ^^!

My Rating : 4/5