This movie review was chosen by  pino.noir. I hope you like it, friend!

Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) are all animals living in Central Park Zoo. Marty is starting to tire of the pampered life in the zoo and longs for a more rewarding life in the wild. When Marty escapes Alex and the others head off to bring him back to the zoo, but they end up getting captured and shipped off to Africa. However, they soon end up getting shipwrecked off the coast of Madagascar and meet a group of lemurs ruled by King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen). What the animals don't realise is that in the wild Alex is their natural predator and his instincts are starting to come back.

I never particularly cared for this film when it first came out. I always thought that the sequels were better. My opinion has since changed after I gave it another watch for this review. I still think the sequels are better, but I don't think it is quite as bad as I first thought. It definitely isn't as much of a chore to watch as the first Shrek. This film also comes from a time when Dreamworks seemed determined to rip-off everything Disney and Pixar made. When Pixar made A Bug's Life, Dreamworks made Antz. When Pixar made Finding Nemo, Dreamworks made A Shark's Tale. It's clear which films won out of those two (A Bug's Life and Finding Nemo), but Dreamworks finally scored a win when they released Madagascar in an attempt to one-up a Disney movie called The Wild. Who remembers The Wild now any way?

King Julien and the Penguins are my favourite characters in the whole series. It looks like everybody else agreed with me as King Julien and the Penguins would get larger parts as the series went along and even got their own TV spin-off. The Penguins also got their own spin-off movie. Whatever scenes King Julien doesn't steal end up being stolen by the Penguins instead. Maybe the problem I have with the main characters is that they get on my nerves a little bit. Alex is arrogant, Marty is too loud and Melman is a hypochondriac. The only main character that doesn't get on my nerves is Gloria. I like her, she is wonderfully sassy. Thankfully, most of the main characters get slightly less annoying as the series goes along. Marty is still too loud though.

My rating: 3 stars.