Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

(2008)

The best I can say about this is that it was competent. But it tried to take on too much story, and spent too much time with characters I thought were peripheral, at best. (The first one wasn’t much better.) The funniest parts again involve the four penguins, but they are too few and far between. It also suffers from the too-frenetic syndrome, which infects almost all animated movies these days, except the ones from Pixar. Those guys know when it’s appropriate to go into high gear, and when it’s better to slow down and let something build. You’d think the geniuses who greenlight these projects would take a look at the tons of money every Pixar film has made, and study them, and maybe a light bulb would go on … hey, maybe we should take a little more time here and there!!! … but no.