“Penguins of Madagascar boasts a colorful palette and marginally fun elements of manic zest, but it’s too thin to warrant much of a recommendation, especially when there’s another family offering [like Big Hero 6] that really deserves your attention.”
When you watch any of the three Madagascar films, if you’re anything like myself, or even my father for that matter, you occasionally wished for a two or three minute cutaway from all the time you spent with the quartet of animal characters to those four cute and witty penguins. The penguins in the Madagascar films always knew what to say and do in their brief little interjections, and found ways to make us forget they were nothing more than narrative distractions.
- Penguins of Madagascar
- Directed by
Eric Darnell & Simon J. Smith - Cast
Tom McGrath, Chris Miller, Christopher Knights - Release Date
26 November 2014 - Steve’s Grade: C-
My biggest fear with Penguins of Madagascar, DreamWorks Animation’s latest installment in the Madagascar franchise, is the same concern I have for next year’s Minions film, which is, can these witty little side characters carry an entire film and remain consistently funny? Having never seen an episode of The Penguins of Madagascar TV series on Nickelodeon, I had no answer until I saw this film, which, while occasionally amusing and innocuous, proved to be less memorable or charming than any of the previous Madagascar films.
The story focuses on the four penguins we’ve come to know and love: Skipper (voiced by Tom McGrath), the leader of the quartet, Kowalski (Chris Miller), the brains, Rico (Conrad Vernon), the trouble-maker, and Private (Christopher Knights), the youngest of the quartet. After a brief prologue showing how the three penguins met their youngest member, we center in on the time period directly after the events of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, which shows the penguins escaping the Central Park Zoo and celebrating Private’s birthday by breaking into Fort Knox so he can use the base’s vending machine to buy a bag of Cheesy Dibbles.
*****
Following their escape, the penguins are kidnapped and flown to a submarine base in Venice, where they meet an old-time colleague, an octopus named Dave (John Malkovich). Dave was once the main attraction at the zoo, being able to contort himself and his eight legs into numerous positions, before being shunned and eventually abandoned with the popularity of the four adorable, smiling and waving penguins. Dave has now gotten to a point in time where he wants to exact revenge on the group, setting forth a kidnapping plot and, on a sidenote, an identity crisis from Private, who feels inferior to the remainder of his penguin pals because he feels he doesn’t have any special skills to offer them.
With the abundance of TV specials and episodes The Penguins of Madagascar TV series has, I struggle to see how this story couldn’t have been maintained within the realms of a Saturday night premiere on Nickelodeon. Moreover, I also struggle to see why more wit and heart couldn’t have been etched into the story so the bulk of the jokes and wordplay the penguins engage in doesn’t solely rely on Skipper forgetting Dave’s name. Some of the funniest material, strangely enough, comes from Dave himself, especially when he’s calling his crew of octopuses for assistance and referencing celebrities names while doing it (IE: “William! Hurt them. Halle! Bury them!”). Being a teenager, I enjoy those kinds of references, but I too struggle to grasp a child understanding these references and laughing as loudly as I did.
Penguins of Madagascar boasts a colorful palette (not very comparable to Big Hero 6, however, which serves as much better and more ideal family entertainment thanks to its themes) and marginally fun elements of manic zest, but it’s too thin to warrant much of a recommendation, especially when there’s another family offering that really deserves your attention. I usually laud the decision for a studio to try something riskier, seeing as DreamWorks could’ve easily went with Madagascar 4 over this, but the whole time, I couldn’t help my mind from wandering and wondering, “what are those quirky animals up to?”
