Overall the movie is about friendship and overcoming individual desires for the greater good. It's all very lighthearted, so the messages aren't going to make a huge impact here. Some conflicts and selfishness.
Educational Value
very little
Intended for entertainment, not education, but kids might pick up a bit about what kinds of animals live in Madagascar.
Positive Role Models
very little
The main characters are generally positive with exaggerated personalities for comic effect. Some of the humor relies of stereotypes -- a whiny hypochondriac, the fey king -- and soem characters are particularly sneaky and mischevious.
Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that there's some crude humor and sexual innuendo that will probably go over the youngest kids' head. The animals confront assorted dangerous situations, including an encounter with police, containment in crates (dark, closed spaces), a stormy sea and shipwreck, and, most alarmingly, a startling personality change in Alex, the lion, when he wants to eat his friends. There's a shooting with tranquilizer darts in which a character hallucinates to the tune of Sammy Davis Jr.'s song "Candyman" (younger viewers won't know this is about drugs, but the allusion is there). Gloria the hippo briefly appears with seaweed on her body, simulating "pasties" on breasts and crotch area. The lemurs are hunted by scary hyena-like creatures. A secondary plot has a crew of penguins acting like spies, which has them tunneling out of the zoo, knocking out a ship's captain, and stealing an ocean liner. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
In MADAGASCAR, unhappy Central Park Zoo zebra Marty (voiced by Chris Rock) yearns for open spaces and herds of other zebras, but his zoo friends -- Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) -- are content. Alex is especially reluctant to leave, because he's pampered like a celebrity. Still, when Marty makes a break one night, they all follow to rescue him and end up getting caught by human authorities, who decide to ship the animals off. But the ship sinks, and the animals wash up on Madagascar, where the two central communities are the lemurs and the lemur-eating fossas. A crisis emerges when Alex gets hungry and begins to hallucinate that his friends are juicy steaks on legs, just before he roars and attacks them. When he realizes what he's doing, he's mortified, but his instincts are hard to repress. Eventually, the friends find a solution. They feed Alex sushi, leave the island "paradise," and resolve to return to some form of captivity.
Madagascar is a cute idea about a journey that doesn't have a particularly compelling place to go -- but it's still fun. The subplot involving a group of almost maniacal penguins is particularly entertaining. The voice actors are fine overall, though as Melman the giraffe, Schwimmer basically plays his Friends character, Ross, as a cartoon. In the future, he might want to stretch out a bit further.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the film's portrayals of friendships and how friends can deal with their companions' different personalities. Did you relate to any of the friendships portrayed here?
Families can also discuss the film's use of cliches and stereotypes as jokes (the "island" music that characterizes the lemur community, the whiny hypochondriac, the fey lemur king). Why do movies use so many stereotypes? At what point do stereotypes do harm?
Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by
suggesting a diversity update.
Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
