Fish and Cherries Productions

Penguins of Madagascar wasn’t anything super spectacular or groundbreaking, but it was still fun. I may not have thought much of the original Madagascar when I saw it, but I thought the penguins were the best part, so this was welcome entertainment. There were a lot of clever and fast jokes, as well as a string of puns that I couldn’t tell whether they were clever, corny, ironic, or all three. That said, the plot is a string of tropes and conventions, which leaves Benedict Cumberbatch’s character, which he brings all of his natural charm to, as merely a plot device and not a particularly interesting character. As such, you’ll probably figure out most of the plot as soon as movie gets going.

The biggest stick for me is that the moral seems very confused: there’s a message at the end about how a person’s worth is truly what’s on the inside, but this is being delivered while the heroes are turning people from monstrous to cute. That’s such a huge contradiction that I’m still trying to get my head around it. Honestly, though, I’m glad I saw it. The penguins are their funny selves and there’s plenty of good comedy from the side characters, which is all I was really expecting. It has its faults and it doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s still fun.