literally Lion King retold … but Shrekified

check out the RE-view of Madagascar here

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa picks up where Madagascar left off: with our cadre of lovable animal friends trying to escape Madagascar where they were washed up in the original film, Robinson Crusoe style. In a penguin-piloted plane back to New York — what could go wrong? Well, a lot — surprisingly. Short story shorter: they crash land in Africa.

Madagascar 2 takes the charm and the likable characters of the first movie but rounds them out by giving a deep backstory to our fully three dimensional characters (ahem). Yes, we find out the origins of our main protagonist Alex the Lion. Madagascar 2 also bounces along fine, but I couldn’t help but feel that in order to avoid totally rehashing the plot of the first movie as so often happens in light-hearted comedies (Family Affair 1 and 2, Harold and Kumar 1 and 2, Ace Ventura 1 and 2, and so on), the writers decided to shamefacedly go down the plagiarism route: this story is literally Lion King retold with the Madagascar characters but pushed in a slightly Shrekified direction.

There’s the odd cultural reference, as in Madagascar, but thankfully these are few and far between. The jokes are actually jokes, not references.

Unoriginal it may be, and definitely the inferior Dreamworks computer animated franchise of the noughties (Shrek is the undoubted king whose sheen has not been dimmed by the passing of time), it is none-the-less entertaining. Likable characters, a simple story well-told, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is an entertaining way to waste ninety minutes (yeah, it’s a waste — you’re not learning anything here, and there’s nothing philosophical to unwrap).

3/5

© 2022 Bryan A. J. Parry

featured image from https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/agRbLOHgN46TQO4YdKR462iR7To.jpg