Madagascar with Penguin Pattern Book Cover (2005)

Entertainment Weekly
"[A] delightfully wacked new digitally animated comedy....Untamed fun." 06/03/2005 p.61-62

Sight and Sound
"MADAGASCAR offers plenty of amusement..." 08/01/2005 p.60

Premiere
"Ben Stiller and Chris Rock's characters may be digital but the actors' personas propel their every move." 02/01/2006 p.106

Reel.com 8 of 10
This summer March of the Penguins became one of the most successful documentaries of all time, as the birds triumphed in an otherwise lackluster blockbuster season. Given all this, it should come as no surprise that it is a quartet of penguins that lifts DreamWorks' animated fable Madagascar--now available on a lavishly appointed DVD--out of the ordinary...Of the lead characters, only Melman really stands out. Between his hypochondria and that long neck, he is the most purely idiosyncratic and comic of the four, and, let's face it, with that slow as molasses, whiny voice, Schwimmer was born to be a cartoon character...The movie is technically impressive, with water, sand, and a fully animated jungle that look terrific. The biggest achievement, though, is with the characters that resemble the best of hand-drawn animation in the way they can stretch, squash, and then pop back into their original form. That adds another element of visual humor, particularly in scenes involving Melman, whose shape is so suggestive that it just begs to be treated like Silly Putty. - Pam Grady
 
ReelViews 7 of 10
Eventually, it had to happen: a computer-animated dud. It's surprising it has taken this long, and we have been spoiled by the high quality of the product, with such winning titles as Toy Story, Shrek, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and others. But, with the death of traditional animation and the proliferation of titles in this arena, a slip in quality was inevitable. Thus far, 2005 has seen two of these movies: Robots and Madagascar. And, although Robots was mediocre entertainment, Madagascar slips a notch below that...Madagascar will make money because parents are always on the look-out for "safe" family films, and, in general, animated fare meets that criterion. The problem here is that, while there's nothing offensive about this movie, it's not especially entertaining. I often gauge how compelling a motion picture is by how many times I glance at my watch. With Madagascar, that number was higher than it should be for a film with such a short (85-minute) running length. With so many other options available at this time of the year, my advice is to give this movie a pass in theaters and rent it when it's available on video. At least then, if you or the kids get bored through the long stretches in which nothing happens, the fast-forward button is close at hand. - James Berardinelli
 
Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
From their earliest days when Mickey Mouse was still in black and white, cartoons have created a divide between animals who are animals and animals who are human -- or, if not human in the sense that Paris Hilton is human, then at least human in the sense that they speak, sing, have personalities and are voiced by actors like Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett Smith...Now comes "Madagascar," an inessential but passably amusing animated comedy that has something very tricky going on. What happens if the human side of a cartoon animal is only, as they say, a veneer of civilization? Consider Alex the Lion. In the Central Park Zoo, he's a star, singing "New York, New York" and looking forward to school field trips because he likes to show off for his audiences...The movie is much too safe to follow its paradoxes to their logical conclusion, and that's probably just as well. The problem, though, is that once it gets them to the wild, it doesn't figure out what to do with them there, and the plot seems to stall. "Madagascar" is funny, especially at the beginning, and good-looking in a retro cartoon way, but in a world where the stakes have been raised by "Finding Nemo," "Shrek" and "The Incredibles," it's a throwback to a more conventional kind of animated entertainment. It'll be fun for the smaller kids, but there's not much crossover appeal for their parents. - Roger Ebert