a: Not busy. Baking cakes doesn't count as business in my book.
b: Not going to the cinema unless it's for a date, in which case, they should just watch whatever the man wants to watch and like it. And if the man choses to watch Madagascar, well, you're screwed then.
But I digress. Don't see Madagascar. It's shit. Just thought I'd reiterate that point, for any weird people out there who only read the ninth/tenth sentences in the main post body and choose to ignore the title altogether. Madagascar is the biggest stinking pile of rubbish ever. Well, not ever, I'm sure that there are worse films. In fact, I KNOW there are worse films. Hitch, for examples. Or shitty romantic comedies. Many of them star Ben Stiller. Ironically, Ben Stiller was my main reason for going to see this film. I saw his name in the newspapers and I said to myself "Wow, Ben Stiller's in a film! That's such a rarity nowadays I had better cancel my tickets to the bypass surgery and go watch it." A-ha. I'm joking, of course, the main reason was that I'm chums with a bunch of spaztards who decide that going to a cruddy children's film is a good way to spend time/money. Cough Hitch cough.
Now for my reasons which this film is a waste of valuable brain cells:
The character design is moronic. I'm sorry, but it was just annoying. If they were going for a Tex Avery madcap overexaggerated cartoon style, which I think was the intention, just dress all the animals in pinstripe suits and have them smoke cigars. I mean, for the love of christ:
Seriously, what the FUCK? No wonder the film is shit, look at the title characters.
There is no main character. Now, I know that this scheme has been pulled of successfully in many films, such as Magnolia or 21 Grams, but this is an animated film about lions and zebra getting along happily in peace and harmony. It is not a malaised pondering on the existance of life and death and how we are all connected, or a gritty, hardcore drugs story. If they'd somehow managed to combine all three concepts together, they may have had something. But they didn't. So instead you get a mess.
At the beginning, the main character is this retarded zebra called Marty or Frank or something, I cant remember (if I can't remember the names of the title characters seventeen hours after seeing it, you know the film is poor. I last saw the Lion King like seven years ago, yet I can still name Simba, Zazoo, Timon, Pumba, Musafa, Kiara, and all the other cats... RINSED MADAGASCAR RINSED). Zebra wants to leave the zoo, so zebra is the main character. Then for a while they turn it into an ensemble piece with a LION called Ben Stiller. And a hippopopopopomaotomas played by some black chick and a giraffe played by Ross from Friends. Then halfway through you have no idea who the main character is meant to be. Is it the lion? Is it the zebra? WHO CARES?
The main characters are impressive in the way that EVERY ONE OF THEM are annoying. I mean, even the Teletubbies have Noo-Noo, the pissed off vacuum cleaner. But no, by the end of the first half, I was praying for a hunter of some sort. Or at least AIDS.
The Zebra is a cunt who gets everyone into a mess then ends up have a great party. He also says black phrases every five minutes, just to remind everyone that they cast a minority in the movie, and also to connect with the urban audience. He keeps going on about whether he is black with white stripes or white with black stripes, despite the fact that he is quite clearly white with black stripes.
IF THE MAJORITY OF YOUR FUCKING BODY IS WHITE AND THE BLACK STRIPES ARE THE MINORITY, YOU ARE WHITE WITH BLACK STRIPES. YOU STUPID TWAT.
The Lion is a tit who whinges about steak and spends half the film complaining about everything. Then he suddenly turns all evil and has hallucinations about steak. Now at this point, I had hopes that he'd kill the rest of the cast. Did he? No. He pisses off and whinges some more. Then he suddenly changes his mind again and becomes nice. Wow, that's some character arc you got there, Mr Lion.
The Hippopotamous or however the hell you spell it is a woman. So therefore she's perfect as HEAVEN FORBID the writers make her have any faults or, you know, be interesting. She also chants ghetto phrases every ten seconds. Wow, this film is hip.
The Giraffe is pointless. I'm not joking, you could totally remove him from the film, just edit him out, and you wouldn't notice. I mean, if I was watching this film without Ross from friends in it, I wouldn't think to myself 'I know what this films needs, a pointless character who just whinges a lot and has no impact on anything'. There's a good rule to scriptwriting: if you can totally remove something without impacting on the plot, do so. I just made that rule up, but I think it's a good one. Of course, that does mean that Pulp Fiction would be, like, ten minutes long.
The cinema that I saw it in was small. Look, I drew a picture:
It's coloured in and everything. I think I captured my personality perfectly. The fact that this was a really nice small independent (ish) cinema and it was showing this drivel just made me hate this film more. THEY EVEN GAVE US FREE TAPWATER. HOW CAN THEY SHOW THIS? I don't know.
They played Chariots of Fire halfway through. This is like one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever (they played it at my grandfather's funeral) and I'm fucking sick of morons misusing it every time they wanna do a slow-motion shot of people running towards each other. AND THE PEOPLE RUNNING TOWARDS EACH OTHER AND EMBRACING ISN'T EVEN IN CHARIOTS OF FIRE, RETARDS.
There was a moral ending to the film. I HATE MORAL ENDINGS. ARJDLFJSDLFJSDL:K FJKASJHFASDK:SDFsdsdfnmm.jkfasdmsadfasdkfas,fm,sadmfasmdfmsadfasdfasdfnasdnfsa. And this was the worst sort of moral ending: It was so superfluously tacked on, you could SMELL the Pritt Stick. Literally, there was no build-up to it in the film, no indication that anything of the sort was going to happen. Nothing. "It doesn't matter what happens to us, as long as we're all together." THEY SPENT MOST OF THE FILM INTENTIONALLY SPENDING TIME APART FROM EACH OTHER. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PRECEDING FILM.
But back to the film. Well, I guess that there were SOME good points. I'd always thought that it would be impossible to make a feature length film in which nothing happens and there are no character arcs or humour or emotion, and yeah, the Madagascar team proved me right. I like being proven right, so that was good. But COME ON, how can you make a film where NOTHING HAPPENS? Even though they escape the zoo, wash up on an island, build a beach hut, make friends with some lemurs, and then scare off some other animals, NOTHING HAPPENS. That's like, it. Sorry if I ruined it for you, but if you've come this far and you still wanna see this film, you deserve it wrecked for you. And anyway, I already ruined Harry Potter. For those of you who don't know yet, say, some Potter fans who haven't read the book yet but are looking at a review of Madagascar on this website to pass the time, Snape kills Dumbledore. Hah, twats.
But there was no climax. No build-up. No story arc. It was just like watching a series of things happening to these characters who sort of ploughed through them reacting. BLAMMO. And they spent like twenty minutes on a beach arguing. Cruddy.
And there were plot holes the size of the moon. So the animals escaped from the zoo. So, what, the authorities decide to send EVERY ANIMAL IN THE ZOO to Kenya? Even the penguins? THE FUCKING PENGUINS? And then they kept them in crates? Crates? CRATES? And then none of the animals drowned? This films sucks. But I like pointing out plot-holes, it makes me feel smart.
Other good things:
There were these penguins that just spend their time beating up people and doing acrobatics. If they'd made the entire damn film about the penguins, it could have been great.
Ali G played like some random llama hippie king. I mean, his character was random in a 'this makes no plot sense and it entirely unsatisfactory' way, but hey, some of his lines were amusing.
There were some film references that were quite good.
There's a bit where an animal gets drugged and they play this nice hippie version of 'the candyman', so you can close your eyes and pretend that you're watching a hippie version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory although, to be honest, I can't see how WWATCF could possibly get any more drug induced and hippyish.
So yeah, that's my review of Madagascar. I've just figured out why I hate this film, yet most of the other people in the cinema guffawed their way through it. I analyze the damn thing as I'm watching it. They just look at the pretty colours. They're like people really impressed at a complicated engine, when I actually notice that it's painted on a bit of wood. In vomit.
Wow, analogy.
In case you're one of those people who only read the last lines of posts and ignores the rest, don't go and see Madagascar. It's shit.
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