I went to see "Madagascar" today. My 7 year old loved it. I did not. I thought the story was very weak. It had a couple of good themes to work with, but they never developed them. The first was, "The grass is always greener" and the second was, "Friendship can overcome anything."

The grass was not greener for the Penguins in Antarctica, but they loved Madagascar instead of going back to the zoo. There part was very short since they were not the main characters. The others finally did want to go back to the zoo, but they wanted to take their time and travel around for a while first.

The friendship theme played more central, but was toward the end. It was not well developed either. Alex overcame his natural desire to kill and eat Marty, the zebra, to rescue him. I think this could have been done better.

The penguins were overall the funniest part of the movie, but most of their parts had already been shown in trailers. Alex, the Lion getting beat up by the old lady got the most laughs, but again this was already seen in the previews.

There was the potty humor, drunk monkeys and sexual references that are very common to animated movies now. These are unnecessary and just dumb down the movie. There are much better ways to get the attention of adults than this.

The movie was played for slapstick humor mostly so this was more appropriate. The problem was that the animation was very exaggerated. So much so that is was distracting to me.

I would not recommend this movie. Also, for full disclosure, I do know two of the people who worked on this movie.

Please visit my site for other book and movie reviews.