Madagascar "Escape to Africa"

I was at the cinema together with my friend looking through the monitor screen which were showing all the shows that were presently being screened. Debating with each other over what is good and what is not we finally decided to go for something in the middle. My mind was so set in watching a horror movie but my friend is not. The answer to our cinema choice was "Madagascar: Escape to Africa".

Not another animation movie I thought to myself. I dragged myself into the cinema seat down. My last animated movie, Kung Fu Panda, I must say has been a pleasant experience but animated movie has always have its ups and down. The movie surprisingly surpasses the quality of the first film made. Though the story is scattered as it tried to wedge several different narratives into a movie that is less than an hour and a half long, but thankfully the animated comedy genre where good joke-writing and cute characters compensated the plot deficiencies. The animation is sharp, and whenever things start to get confusing, a penguin or lemur comes onscreen and does something really funny distracting us from ever trying to figure out what was going on.

"Madagascar 2" begins where the last one left off, with the lion, giraffe, zebra and hippo from "Madagascar" leaving the titular country and heading back to their homes at the New York Zoo. These first 10 minutes of the movie are genius, with the mercenary-for-hire penguins from the first film piloting a restored plane that crashed into the jungle decades earlier. One character reads an old Life magazine with Joe DiMaggio on the cover, trying to ignore the skeletons scattered throughout the cockpit and the engine that's smoking outside the window.

The group detours to Africa, where Alex the Lion runs into his father, Zuba. From here, the story splinters into several directions - some boring and some inspired. Alex's father issues and the romantic subplot between the hippo and the giraffe are tired. Any scenes with penguins or the lemur are bound to generate a few laughs, even though the Julien-related volcano sacrifice subplot doesn't quite work.

Much of the humor in "Madagascar 2" is broad, but the script avoids flatulence jokes and broad slapstick, adding a sophisticated level of parody in several scenes. A subplot involving New Yorkers who get trapped in Africa goes in unexpected directions, which are mostly very amusing. Some monkeys show up to help build a new plane, and spend the majority of their time negotiating on behalf of their union.

However I must say that of all the characters in Madagascar, either the prequel or sequal, the penguins are the most adorable characters. They are the plot-movers and laugh-shakers of the movie, cobbling together a plane wreck and a giant slingshot in a bid to send Stiller's lion, Rock's zebra, Schwimmer's giraffe and Pinkett Smith's hippo from Madagascar back to Manhattan. Unfortunately, Air Penguin as it is known gets no further than mainland Africa before making an unexpected crash landing in a nature reserve. Undeterred, and with the help of enough monkeys only after the Union demands were made, to take a crack at Shakespeare, the penguins set about rebuilding the plane.

I have to say that the movie was worth the time spent. Least I do not have to spend too much time trying to figure out what was going on and where the how the plot was developing and unveiling itself. I just need to laugh as and when the crowd laugh out. I couldn't wait for the next movie to be released only that I hope it will be sooner, to quote Cohen's lemur king, "Hurry up, before we all come to our senses!"

Unexpected Hero !

Let us faced it... no matter how much you hate animation movies and the number of bad experiences that you had with past movies, watching Kung Fu Panda would change your perpective to a certain extend and relive your expectation of what an animation movie should be and could have been. Personally, after watching countless number of animation movies, I would surely place Kung Fu Panda as one of the movies that I would not mind watching again.

Critics would ask the timing that the movie is launched in the climax of the Beijing Olympic. There are some who said that the movie is a propaganda effort in promoting China and the game. But for me... who cares. I am not even bothered if the whole plot is being written by the Communist Party.

"There is no charge in awesomeness or attractiveness" that is the catch line that brought me to tears in laughter. The movie began with Po's dream of a battle that he fought with thousands of enemies. Po is a chubby panda who works in a noodle restaurant owned by his adoptive goose father. He dreams of becoming a kung fu master, however his dreams are impossibly hampered by his weight and clumsiness. Po's adoptive father had also hoped that he will take take over the noodle restaurant from him one day. The tortoise Master Oogway had a premonition that the evil snow leopard warrior Tai Lung , the former student of his own protégé, Red Panda Shifu, will escape from prison and return to threaten the Valley of Peace. Oogway then ordered a formal ceremony to choose the mighty Dragon Warrior who can defeat Tai Lung. Everyone assumes that one of the Furious Five — Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper and Crane— a quintet of supremely skilled martial artists trained by Shifu, will be chosen for this honor.

While the Five demonstrate their skills at the ceremony, Po finds himself late for the ceremony and locked outside the palace square. As a last-ditch attempt to get in, he makes a chair out of fireworks, which sends him flying into the center of the arena and landed right infront of the old master. Inspired by this sudden appearance, the old master designates Po the Dragon Warrior to everyone's shock. Despite Po's protests and Shifu's pleas to reconsider, Oogway stands by his decision.

Revolted at having Po under his tutelage, Shifu attempts to make him quit by berating and humiliating him. The Five similarly dismiss Po as a worthless interloper. Although he becomes aware of Shifu's true intentions and is deeply hurt by his heroes' disdain for him, Po endures their abuse willingly for the dream to become something more than the failure he thinks he is. Master Oogway, still certain that Po is the right choice, gives him sage advice to believe in himself.

Eventually, Po endears himself to the Five with his tenacity, good cooking, and corny sense of humor.
In the Valley of Peace, Oogway passes away, his final wish that Shifu train Po. However, upon learning of Tai Lung's return, and realizing that he has to face Tai Lung, Po attempts to flee. Shifu stops the panda and promises to train him if he is truly destined to be the Dragon Warrior. When Po confesses his deep self-loathing due to his obesity and his belief that he may never be a match for Tai Lung, Shifu is at a loss for a solution. After a long night of pondering, Shifu discovers the following morning that Po is capable of impressive physical feats when motivated by food. Realizing that he has found the right focus for the panda, Shifu leads Po to the countryside for an intensive training regime in which Po is offered food as a reward for learning his lessons properly. Po excels in his training with food as a motivation and swiftly becomes a skilled combatant.
Shifu decides Po is ready to face the villian and gives him the sacred Dragon Scroll, which promises great power to the possessor. When Po opens it, he finds nothing but a blank reflective surface. Stricken with despair at the scroll's apparent worthlessness, Shifu orders his students to lead the villagers to safety while he stays to delay Tai Lung from pursuing them for as long as he can.

As Po helped the vi;;agers in the evacuation, he met his father who tries to cheer him up by telling him the secret ingredient of the family's noodle soup: nothing. He explained that things become special, because people believe them to be special. Realizing that this truth is the very point of the Dragon Scroll, Po rushes off to help Shifu. At this time, Tai Lung attacks Shifu for the dragon scroll but was angered when he realised that the Scroll is gone. But he before can kill his former mentor, Po arrives to challenge him. Although Tai Lung scoffs at Po's abilities, the ensuing fight proves Po to be a formidable opponent.

Po tries to explain the wisdom of the scroll to Tai Lung, but the frustrated Tai Lung tries to subdue Po with his nerve strikes. The attack proves useless on the panda, as his nerves are difficult to find due to his body fat. Emboldened, Po counter-attacks with an improvised combat style that takes advantage of his girth to absorb and deflect the force from Tai Lung's attacks back at him. In the end, Po uses the Wuxi Finger Hold on Tai Lung (which he claims to have "figured out" on his own), and destroys him with a devastating explosion that ripples through the valley.

The Five return to the valley to investigate the cause of the explosion and find a slightly dazed but triumphant Po. Impressed at Po's victory, Tigress leads the Five to acknowledge the panda as a Kung Fu master. The villagers follow suit and hail Po as a hero. Po remembers that his teacher is wounded, and rushes back to Shifu, who is now finally at peace. At first, he appears to be dead, but it turns out that he is only resting after such a trying battle.

Through out the movie it is filled with catchy lines and humour that will not fail to tickle the funny bones in your body. At the end of the day, the moral of the story is, .........................it pays to be fat. So why bother to keep fit then.

The one word of wisdom that struck me deep and still lingers deep in my thoughts after watching the movie was what Master Oogway said to Shifu when the latter was lamenting that it is impossible to train Po. He said "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is the the Future whilst today is a Gift that is why it is called the Present" How true such spoken word is. In life we are so worried with the past that it paralysed us from what we could do and we are so engrossed with the future that we have forgotten what the now and here presents to us.