With Talking Animals Like These...

Twice this week I went to the theater to watch the latest animated sequels to hit the big screen. They were Ice Age: Continental Shift (2012) and Madagascar: Europe's Most Wanted (2012). Both times I went with my friend Brent, and both times he had not seen any of the other movies which led to some pretty interesting discussions afterward.

Its called inter-species erotica fucko

Our first outing we sat down and watched Madagascar. I had only seen the first one which I didn't like at all. The animation was awkward, the story just wasn't that interesting, the characters were annoying and the primary lessons was "don't eat your friends." This time around it seemed the makers wanted their public to gleefully swallow more absurd notions than a vegetarian lion. Hippos and giraffes can apparently fall in love; as can bears and lemurs, lions and cheetahs. Whatever floats your boat I suppose.

The plot revolves around the same four animals, Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer). This time the film starts in Africa as they await the arrival of the penguins (animals who also left the zoo from the first movie) to take them back to the zoo. Apparently in the movie I didn't see Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), the penguins had created a crude aircraft that could fly to Monte Carlo but didn't bring the main characters for some unknown reason. Fearing they were abandoned, the four, along with their lemur compatriots, make their arduous journey to Monte Carlo, which meant they would have had to walk through the thick jungles of central Africa then trek across the world's largest desert, then swim the width of the Mediterranean. But hey why focus on that when with one screen dissolve they're there! Convinient.

Hurray plot contrivances!!

The foursome manage to sneak into a Monte Carlo casino where the penguins and their monkey friends are winning it big. Things get hairy. The fuzz is called and we are introduced to our main villain Captain DuBois

Will stop at nothing to get John Connor

(Frances McDormand) a psychotic, seemingly unstoppable animal control agent. From there the movie just throws everything including the kitchen sink at you in fast procession. A nuclear reactor, a flying machine, an Edith Piaf song that can cure broken bones, a flying circus with a new glut of characters is introduced Jesus movie! Can't you slow down enough to explain anything?
Now don't be thinking I have a lack of imagination here because I don't personally believe a hippo can fit through an air-duct. All I'm saying is if you want to violate the laws of physics that much you should keep it consistent. Why don't the animals simply swim to New York? Why don't they use the nuclear reactor they just happen to have to go back in time before they ever left? Why not break into the CERN Hadron collider in Geneva and make their particle mass resemble that of an electron then travel to New York near the speed of light? They're in the neighborhood after all.

Ice Age 5: Extinction

A few days after the traumatic events of Madagascar we ventured into the theater again last night to see the midnight premiere of Ice Age: Continental Drift. Unlike the Madagascar movies, I've actually seen all of the Ice Age movies and on the whole, I like them. I do find it kind of funny how the the films have progressed over the years and yet the same three characters are always forced to be with each other with the largely mute Scrat character always underfoot. The scale also seems to be widened every damn time too. The first one was about bringing a human child back to its tribe, the second was about saving the whole herd from imminent doom and the third was about being trapped in the land of dinosaurs. In this one literally the entire planet shifts its continents to serve as a plot device. How much you want to bet the next one they're unfrozen in modern times.

In this one, Manny (Ray Romano), Diego (Denis Leary) and Sid (John Leguizamo) are once again separated by friends and family by a massive continental shift. While the trio are bobbing precariously on a piece of ice

Ice Pirates!!!

on the ocean, the herd (which include the voices of Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott, Keke Palmer & Josh Gad) must outrun the shifting continent before they're crushed by debris or forced into the sea. While out in the ocean the trio run into a band of pirates (Peter Dinklage, Jennifer Lopez et al.) who will stop at nothing to bring them down. Also Sid's granny (Wanda Sykes) is with them.

There's nothing too bad about Ice Age in comparison to Madagascar. I could give you some data that proves the continental shift in the story is impossible but at this point, my suspension of disbelief is at an all time high. A lot of the jokes worked very well and while much of the dialogue felt stilted, the main three remain the best part about these movies.

Too...many...characters...can't...feel...face!

I guess the largest problem this Ice Age has is also true of Madagascar. Both are flooded with new characters to interact with placing too much chaos on the screen. Its not like these are tragic or overly dramatic movies, they're animated family films, so they can't really kill off anyone, though sometimes I wish they did. In Ice Age: Continental Drift we have the sloth, his grandmother, his parents and siblings, the mammoth, his wife and daughter, the sabretooth, the two possums, the squirrel, the molehog, the four other mammoths that have lines, the monkey, the other sabretooth, the rabbit, the elephant seal, the badger, the hydraxes, the narwhals, the whale, the kangaroo, the crow...you realize the first one only had seven characters with lines right? So many characters, so little time to dedicate to them and too many of them are dead weight or annoying.

Here's to hoping the next batch of Ice Age movies improve. I do still like the characters and I want to see them at least one more time before they start getting embarrassing. The Madagascar series on the other hand needs to end. Thankfully I think it will.