Madagascar: Critic Reviews

Untamed fun.

Like many computer-animated features, this one, about four animals exiled from the Central Park Zoo, expends most of its imaginative resources on clever visuals.

The animation is visually stunning, and the animals' stylized rendering and friendly look is in keeping with the energetic mood of the movie.

Madagascar is great good fun, not only because the filmmakers have enlisted some wonderful voice talent but also because the visuals truly are marvelous.

The movie fails to satisfy on such a fundamental level that it either must be setting itself up for a Madagascar 2 or must hope that the audience isn't paying too much attention. I vote for the latter.

Antic, cute, scattershot, it's a remarkable-looking but terribly uncertain bit of CGI fluff, with its richest humor off to the sides of the action and a whole lot of average in the middle.

An antic little charmer, wasting no more or less time on repetitive pratfalls and unpoetic mushiness than any Disney film since 1948.

[It] looks stunning, but it's an ill-conceived mess that plays like two movies awkwardly spliced together.

Brilliantly written, animated and performed, it not only bridges the child-adult divide, but also makes its kid-friendly humor smart in its own way.

Madagascar will have you roaring, but in the right way.

Appropriate for the wee ones, this flick promises to please parents who will inevitably be in for repeat viewings.

After you see Madagascar, you start to think that the movies are being dumbed down even for small children.

It'll be fun for the smaller kids, but there's not much crossover appeal for their parents.

The film never gets going. It's too slow and plodding for kids.

While teens and adults can do worse than Madagascar (anyone for Kingdom of Heaven?), this slight and amusing 'toon is mostly a trip designed for the kiddie crowd to take in.

A good-natured kid flick.

A safe-as-milk, toy-ready, born-to-cross-promote piece of animated Hollywood product that will likely please children but leave adults dreaming of The Incredibles.

The movie is like a doughnut, with frosting on the edges and a big hole in the middle.

Pleasant, if mediocre family fare.

Sputters to an end without building to any sort of satisfying conclusion.

Take the kids. Find a globe. Do some teaching.

The fact is, apart from certain superficial visual distinctions, virtually all of the recent studio-produced, star-voiced computer-animated movies feel like they could have been produced on different assembly lines in the same factory.

A wafer-thin yarn that might have done Sylvester and Tweety proud, but goes missing-in-action when stretched over 80-plus minutes.

Eventually, it had to happen: a computer-animated dud.

Runs out of gas.