Madagascar

September brings about a main event in my life: my daughter's birthday. And that always means a movie... There was no way on Earth I was going to see Herbie, but even that was preferable to The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl - so we saved up the only realistic choice, Madagascar, for a couple of weeks just for this occasion. I'm lucky enough, having a kid, that I can more or less see kid's movies on their level and therefore judge them on their merits. It doesn't make sense to compare these kind of things outside of their genre, and so, this being from the makers of Shrek and Shark Tale, I have to compare it to those. Now, I did write a hugely compelling commentary on the role of animation in pop-culture today, but my PC has crashed twice since then, so it's probably trying to tell me to stop being so pretentious about it and get to the point of whether it's any good or not... Well, it's better than Shark Tale and not as good as Shrek, or anything Pixar have done, for that matter. Not all that surprising - but it is a decent enough way to spend ninety minutes: there are plenty of laughs, especially from the Sasha Baron-Cohen (Ali G) voiced King of the Lemurs! He had me wetting myself, as did the penguins and the poo throwing monkeys (who weren't in it enough). Unfortunate then that the four main characters, though amiable enough, couldn't live up to the supporting cast. Ben Stiller as vain lion turned potential savage, Alex, is OK but lacks the vocal versatility to stand out, as do Jada Pinkett-Smith and David Schwimmer to some extent. Only Chris Rock (who annoys the hell out of me as a real "actor") cuts the dijon as the energetic zebra, and on the whole that's not enough. Take the kids or wait for the DVD - but not enough there to count it as a classic. 7/10 Kx