Penguins of
Madagascar successfully chucks everything stupid, boring, and routine about
the Madagascar movies for a spinoff
focusing on the best part: the penguins. In those earlier films about escaped
zoo animals having a variety of wilderness adventures, the center stage went to
dull neurotic creatures not cut out for jungle life. The fun happened in
whatever a quartet of oblivious and absurdly confident penguins was getting up
to. Scheming like a troop of superspies, complete with exaggerated karate poses
and chopped Army Man voices, they bungled their way from one calamity to the
next with an outsized sense of accomplishment and superiority. Of course,
putting fun side characters in a movie all their own runs the risk of
collapsing the charm with too much of a good thing. After a trial run in a
cartoon series on Nick, here they’re in a movie that matches their loony
goofiness and gives them room to stretch out. It’s a fast, often funny, very
cute slapstick adventure.
In one of the first scenes, the four penguins literally
rocket away from the end of Madagascar 3
into their own story. (“I was getting pretty
tired of that song!” one shouts over the sounds of the previous series’
recurring “I Like to Move It” fading into the distance.) Leader Skipper (Tom
McGrath), enthusiastic young Private (Christopher Knights), serious Kowalski
(Chris Miller), and mute Rico (Conrad Vernon) just want to break into Fort Knox
and steal one of the few remaining stockpiles of banned snack food Cheesy
Dibbles. In the process, they’re pulled into a diabolical octopus’ evil plot to
kidnap penguins from zoos around the world. The crazy cephalopod (John
Malkovich, sounding a chummily megalomaniacal sort) is jealous that penguins
get all the attention, distracting from the less adorable aquatic creatures.
Fair enough, I suppose, but he’s overreacting in gleefully cartoony villainy.
So our hero birds race around the world trying to save
penguins from certain doom. Every step of the way, they cross paths with The
North Wind, an elite commando unit of snow-white arctic animals, a wolf
(Benedict Cumberbatch, in one of his best performances, no joke), a seal (Ken
Jeong), an owl (Annet Mahendru), and a polar bear (Peter Stormare). These
critters are better equipped to fight supervillains. They have a plane, jet
packs, tracking devices, tranquillizer darts, and a secret base in the center
of an iceberg. It’s not hard to see why they’d be upset to find four bumbling
amateur spy penguins doing about as well in the pursuit of stopping the
octopus. The pros make perfect uptight foils for the weirdly effective nonsense
the birds bring. Even better, there’s no way these penguins are learning a
lesson or going through some pat character arcs. They remain blissfully
themselves.
Stuffed with visual gags, rapid puns, and antic action, the
movie has plenty of brisk, colorful cartoony pleasures. The scattershot
globetrotting effectively collapses all sense of geography, going from New York
to Venice to Madagascar to Shanghai and back again in no time at all. That’s
part of the fun, high-energy whirlwind mock spy movie stuff done with waddling
dim wits. Every stop is home to a manic action sequence involving a variety of
animals and weapons deployed to mostly humorous effect. I liked when octopi
swarmed a gondola driver and made him their puppet. That’s something you don’t
see every day. Nor do you often watch a penguin punch an octopus in the face,
or perform a slaphappy dance dressed in lederhosen. Sometimes, you just
appreciate the novelty.
This is one of DreamWorks Animation’s most effective animal
comedies, even though it arrives at a time when they’ve pivoted away from them towards
animated adventures like Kung Fu Panda and
How to Train Your Dragon. Directors
Eric Darnell (Madagascar) and Simon
J. Smith (Bee Movie) make a tight and
uncomplicated feature that’s over in 90 minutes and lots of fun along the way. Added
strange asides include: a documentary filmmaker voiced by Werner Herzog in Encounters at the End of the World mode,
a shouting man-on-the-street reporter voiced by Billy Eichner, penguins in
mermaid costumes (“You mermaid my day!”), and a villain’s habit of shouting for
henchmen in ways that accidentally sound like celebrity names (“Drew! Barry!
More power!”). It’s an enjoyable time at the movies, quick, pleasant, energetic,
funny, and modest. I’m not complaining.
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