Penguins of Madagascar (2014)

When I first heard about this movie, I was thankful that Dreamworks chose to go this route instead of just giving us a Madagascar 4 (though at this point I won't be surprised if we see one sometime down the road) and rehashing what we have already seen for three movies. The Penguins offer a lot of potential. Unfortunately, while Penguins of Madagascar finally escapes the rehashed feeling of the Madagascar films with something new, it still proves to be underwhelming.

As the title suggest, the movie focuses on the four penguins from the Madagascar films, though it isn't necessary to have seen the other movies to understand this one. When the four penguins have a run-in with a new villain, Dave, they are forced to team up with another group of animal secret agents to stop Dave's evil plan.

It's a pretty straightforward plot up until the last bit (which I will talk about later). The film starts out fantastic. After a bit of back story the viewer is thrown straight into the action and it keeps up a nice fast pace. It is extremely entertaining to watch the action scenes unfold and the humor is top-notch. There are a lot of very clever jokes and a second viewing is probably required to catch everything. The voice acting is also top notch and I appreciate that they did not feel the need to rely on celebrities like many Dreamworks films do (the only big name was Benedict Cumberbatch, who also did a great job). For the first part of the film I was very entertained and began to think that this movie had surpassed my expectations.

But then, just like a balloon deflating, all of the fun, humor, and energy got sucked out in the third act. The energy was replaced by clichés and the clever humor from earlier was replaced with just downright weird jokes that didn't make any sense to me. For the last fifteen to twenty minutes the film just seems to drag, and by the time it was over all of the fun and excitement I had been feeling earlier was replaced by a "Eh, it was OK." I am quite disappointed that the writers could not keep up the fun feeling from the first half or give us something truly new.

While I appreciate Dreamworks trying to give us something a little different from the previous Madagascar films, this one just fell flat by the end. The kids will probably enjoy it and parents will have a few laughs at some of the jokes from the beginning of the film, but it lacks the creativity or emotion to leave an impact the way How to Train Your Dragon 2 did.