Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa

I hate sequels nowadays so obviously I was hesitant to go see Madagascar 2 in theaters. I really really like the original; its colorful, original, and completely hilarious. The writing was very clever so its always been an animated film I really appreciated. Now that the sequel is coming out on DVD Feb 6 I finally had a chance to check it out. The writing has remained hilarious and witty, the animation has improved slightly, its actually pretty good. I found it just as interesting as the original when it comes to the actual story. But when the movie was over I didn't feel like it was something I'll ever watch again. I have a feeling that what I didn't enjoy about this one was the setting. Madagascar 1 takes place in a gorgeous version of New York City and then a colorful and exotic Madagascar. Moving the story to Africa puts the characters in an ugly dull setting. Something about the setting messed up the visual appeal of this franchise. That doesn't take away from the story though. The story is engaging and all the hilarious characters from the first film are back. King Julian and The Penguins all get a tiny bit more face time in this one, but it isn't overdone like some sequels tend to do. The writing remains clever, even down to including another Twilight Zone joke. (In the first film they find an airplane with a book inside entitled "To Serve Lemurs" and Mort screams "It's a cookbook! A cookbook!" a reference to the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man". In part 2 they use that airplane to fly from Madagascar to Africa, Mort is trapped outside the plane and Alex looks out his window to see what looks like Mort destroying the wing and he screams "Gremlin!", a reference to the classic episode "Nightmare at 20,000 feet.") Stuff like that is what makes a nerd like me enjoy these films. There are just a lot of ridiculous lines that are hilarious and still seem to make complete sense to the story.

Anyways, i should try and wrap this up, if you enjoyed the first one you will enjoy this one. It isn't a sell out like "Pirates of the Caribbean"...:(. If you haven't seen the first one, watch it, then decide if you wanna see more. Pretty simple. The animation is in the cheesy kinda cheap looking Dreamworks fashion (like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda.) So if you like that then just go watch it already.