You usually see them in a zoo. Chewing their food, posing in front of the cameras and boring themselves to death. So it`s no surprise that some of them are decided to leave. Go wild so to speak. And they do. Just as Marty the Zebra celebrates his tenth birthday, he decides it`s high time he runs away. And he does. Along with his friends Alex the Lion, Melman the Giraffe and Gloria the Hippo. They run around New York, until they are finally caught on the Grand central station. Because of this whole incident, the powers that be decide they are no longer suitable for life in a habitat and they ship them off into the wild. During their voyage, the penguins kidnap the vessel and because of the whole take-over commotion the crates containing our animal-heroes fall into the sea and land on Madagascar.

Madagascar is run by two species. The cute and cuddly Lemurs and the bad and vicious Fosas. And when our heroes arrive on the island, they are promptly adopted by the Lemurs in hope to fight off the Fosas.

Things do not go smoothly, since Alex the Lion discovers his true nature and tries to get some…meat. He gets scared of himself and runs away, trying to prevent any more damage.

It all ends well, they defeat the bad Fosas and all is well.

It`s not bad…but it`s not exactly good. I guess even Dreamworks makes a not-good cartoon every once in a while. The dialogues are funny, the movie connections are a-plenty (mostly from movies made by Dreamworks of course) and the title song gets into your skull and only comes out if you start singing the Schnappi song.

Still, it`s not a “Finding Nemo” or a “Shrek” type of cartoon. The humour is OK, but it`s mostly kids stuff. Jokes including farts, crashing and falling are nothing compared to witty-dialogue humour that you witness in Shrek and Finding Nemo.

An overall 3/5. The penguins rock!