To start it off: Madagascar is nowhere near Shrek's territory. That says it all I think. And if I would be a self-serving, brutally narrow-minded bigot of a critic (well, considering writing too many movie reviews now, I guess there's no other word to consider myself one, although I only know one person who's reading this from the gazillion people in the whole wide world - me), I should have said much worse than that. But as if i'm not, i'm trying to assess the film from both sides of the coin. As i've said, Madagascar is no Shrek, no Monster, Inc., no The Incredibles, no Finding Nemo, not all of those other stuffs. It's one of those animated films that make you feel nothing less moved nor uplifted after the credits rolled, one of those animated films that you would surely think, was it worth watching. The answer is not so-so. It is an animated comedy that tries to deliver the laughs but persistently speaking, it fails almost all the time. There was a lot of gags, lots of running around, animals chasing wildly, characters bumping into each other and all those schmillion things that would make a 3-year old child laugh. But hey, I'm 15 years older than that, and I've seen so much heck in my life that I couldn't quite pull out a laugh to it anymore. It's not really a bad film, it's not also a good film either. It's somewhere between those territories where you restrain yourself from launching in your seat and throw a bunch of rotten tomatoes and where you stand up and offer a good applause. The film depends too much on it's voices behind the characters. Although Chris Rock rocked a bit, Ben Stiller didn'y, so did Jada Pinkett Smith as the lady hippo. What really rocked in the film were the penguins. The penguins man! They're cool! They deserve a movie in their own selves.Well, to end this right away, I say it doesn't deserve any applause nor it needs one.

Rating: C