Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)

Even at just more than 80 minutes "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" seems a padded, toss-off of the 2005 original. Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett Smith return as the voices of a lion, a giraffe, a zebra and a hippo, respectively. In the original, they went from New York to Madagascar for the comedy. Here, it's Madagascar to Africa. Yawn. The jokes, for the most part are OK funny, but they prop up the mediocre story. Typical Dreamworks. A great animated film (Pixar) has brilliant jokes built upon a solid story. The climax is so lame it needs a song on the soundtrack to limp by. The animation is top notch, naturally. But, who cares. C+