"Madagascar" not so wild

Oh the Saturday matinee in the summer... It is always nice to take a break from the sun in an over air conditioned room with a cool beverage the size of your head and watch a film that does not ask you to think. I thought I was going to watch some cute, fuzzy animals gallop around on an exotic island and have a message about true friendship, and mostly that is what happens. However, "Madagascar" tries, unsuccessfully, to make us care.\n"Madagascar" is about a lion (Ben Stiller), a zebra (Chris Rock), a hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and a giraffe (David Schwimmer) that are all friends in the Central Park Zoo. Marty, the zebra, is unhappy with his current habitat, and finds himself constantly daydreaming about living in the wild. However, the rest of his friends do not understand and believe living in a place where they are groomed, fed and adored by people everyday is great! After Marty has an interaction with some crazy penguins that are building a tunnel out of the zoo to their freedom in Antartica, he decides to break free. When his friends realize what he has done they take it upon themselves to save their friend from his big mistake. Unfortunately for them, their intervention plan backfires and gets them all shipped to Africa. The ship is taken over and the four friends are suddenly sent flying into the Atlantic, only to be tossed to the sandy shores of Madagascar. Before we know it the wild begins to bring out the "real" animal in the characters and their once strong friendship may meet disaster before they ever get off the island.\nIt would be nice to write about these characters as if I felt close to their sad stories and their beautiful friendships, but "Madagascar" never reaches that point. We have to enter the film caring about Marty's depression because the characters do not offer the audience a reason for sympathy. The film does have an all-star cast with voices all ages should recognize, but the two leads, Chris Rock and Ben Stiller, play the same characters we usually see. Rock is still yelling every line like he is doing stand-up and Stiller is all big eyes and lots of hand motions.\nMaybe I am being too harsh on this film. I mean, the children in the theater definitely laughed a few times behind me. Also, the film does offer a couple interesting sequences that play on famous scenes from movies like "American Beauty" that adults will definitely pick up. In the end, "Madagascar" is a simple animated film failing to be more, but it works for a cheap summer matinee.