Penguins of Madagascar Is More Frantic Than Anything Else (Classic Write-Up)

Part of the humor of the main group (that group consisting of Alex, Marty, Gloria and Melman) that all three Madagascar movies center on is that despite being wild animals, their neuroses and problems have an endearing humanity to them. Juxtaposing that with more stylized material (namely that the four at walking talking animals) can make for some fun humor, especially when it involves the franchises penguins, who are smooth talking super spies of sorts who use their skills for mundane tasks such as gambling in Monte Carlo or digging a hole out of the Central Park zoo.

While those avian characters (which, for the record, are named Skipper, Private, Kowalski and Rico) dabbled in the occasional dip into lunacy (the third movie demonstrated them attaching all sorts of gizmos to the cars and airplanes they traveled in), their spin-off movie, Penguins of Madagascar, goes full on crazy, which robs the story of much of the charm that the Madagascar trilogy (sans that middling second movie of course) typically had on hand. The plot of the film deals with the four titular birds trying to stop an evil octopus named Dave (John Malkovich) while also dealing with the North Wind, another group of super spy animals led by Classified (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Whereas in the previous Madagascar films a large part of the fun was seeing the penguins interacting with everyday objects and seeing their antics unfold in our world. Here though, The North Wind brings with them all sorts of gadgets like jet packs and a $19 million dollar jet that don't gel with the more realistic environment past movies have set up. The group itself isn't exactly filled to the brim with memorable characters either, with Cumberbatch feeling a bit stilted as Classified and his other team members never going beyond one-note personalities.

Those wacky penguins don't fare much better in terms of being interesting characters, with the primary character driven conflict within the group (Private feels undervalued as a team member) being played so blatantly that you can tell from the very beginning exactly how it'll play out and conclude. Weirdly, the only person in the cast that left an impression on me was Dave, whose got a legitimately interesting backstory involving his hatred for penguins as a species stemming from them hogging the spotlight at a zoo he stayed at. Plus, John Malkovich works like gangbusters in voice work form, with him relishing every opportunity to deliver a joke or a villainous monologue.

DreamWorks Animation (the studio in charge of this release as well as all of the Madagascar films) does continue to deliver some pleasing looking animation even if the designs of some of the characters and locations feel run-of-the-mill. That type of quality of animation feels fitting for Penguins of Madagascar, which is a motion picture that just doesn't ever become anything really interesting despite its frantic efforts to appease the audience. But in its rush to deliver endless jokes, slapstick and explosion heavy action, Penguins forgot to a script that actually works as a cohesive entity.