Customer Reviews
exc film! - By: twinz, 20 Aug 2008 
im not a big fan of animated films but i have to admit this one was brill. cant wait for nxt one!
Fun character driven film - By: Stampy, 17 Aug 2008 In this 2005 DreamWorks animation, a group of animals are left alone on the island of Madagascar after a mishap involving Marty the zebra trying to escape.
Having seen trailers & read reviews, I must be honest & say that I wasn't expecting much more than a good natured fun family film, which it was, but a still enjoyable & funny one with good natured ideologies about friendship & loyalty & a good sense of humour to make it a fun watch.
With an A list cast of voices including Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Sacha Baron Cohen & Jaden Pinkett Smith, the film had created a good hype coming to it's release a couple of years ago, & now the success was expected & a sequel is currently a couple of weeks away, & with the same cast, it will hopefully be as good as the first.
The whole concept of a lion, a zebra, a giraffe & a hippo alll being best friends is great to even start, & then we see Alex the Lion dancing & showing off for the crowd & the film starts to live up to the expected family fun genre & we are served heavy doses of slapstick comedy & many humorous references to other films, including Cast Away & American Beauty.
The plot is well written with humour & drama encoded in just the right way. However the whole ideology of going away from the zoo could have been developed better & when on the island, the use of the surroundings could have been used for extra comedy as the humour fades away towards the end, which is quite a big anticlimax & seems very rushed.
Nonetheless the humour is there, & is driven by the different personalities of the animals. The egotistical lion, the open-minded zebra, the luckless giraffe & the stubborn hippo alll collide & drive the film forward.
The visual effects are good, though I personallly never take them into account to make a film & with the plot & characters, make an enjoyable film with good natured ideologies.
7.5/10
Mada-GAS-car - By: XTG, 26 Mar 2008 
So to begin with, you get the impression that you are going to get a done-okay-kid's-movie. Which you do...for 30 seconds, then the film hits rock bottom: some crazy animals running around in some cramped enclosure saying stupid things.
Stupid one-liners.
That's alll you get for comedy except for some lemurs, which helped this film get two stars, not one.
Okay, to describe the first scene: there are sweeping camera moves, quite nice music & overalll a good introduction. Then the second scene kicks in, a zebra on a running machine staring at a walll with the wild painted on it. He suddenly decides to go live in a jungle & runs away from the zoo. He arrives at a deserted (why is it deserted??????????????????) Grand Central Station & is about to board the slowing train-why the conductor was about to let a zebra on a train is anyone's guess-when his friends, Alex, Melman & Gloria turn up. They tell him not to go & they head back inside. For some reason there are people inside the station now & this scene ends up with the lion being tranquilized. I have no idea what happened for the ten minutes after that so now to move on to the scene in which the boxes they are shut inside, burst open on the shores of Madagascar. The odd thing about this is, why would anybody tranquilize some animals, stuff them in crates, put them on a cargo ship & then throw them off the boat & turn around as soon as they reached a tiny island off the coast of Africa?
Anyway, the not-necessarilly-unlikable-yet-still-hackneyed-characters wander round the island for a while until they meet some lemurs. Since I at least liked the lemurs, you may expect thing to pick up a little. Do you want me to let you into a little secret though? So did I. But unfortunately, this film couldn't be saved by this point, not even by talking lemurs...
So, overalll, this film is not reallly worth your while: it's repetitive, unoriginal, hackneyed...the list is endless. Don't buy this.
Good Clean Fun - By: A. Marczak, 13 Nov 2007 
Most animated films these days alll seem to be clones of each other. Films with penguins & squirrels tend to blend into one after a while.
Thankfully this is one of the better efforts of the Dreamworks studio, & from the perspective of a parent, this is in the section marked "perfect for little kids". There's enough in it to amuse the parents, enough splats & crashes to amuse the kids. Everyone is happy in the end, no one dies etc.
Also, at the time of writing this DVD is less than a fiver, which is a bargain frankly.
Great! Even though I hated it at first - By: Scarlett, 12 Nov 2007 I hated this film the first time I watched it. I don't know why, but a few months later I thought I'd give it another chance & absolutley loved it! It's funny & charming & a lot better than it's Disney rival 'The Wild'.
