Penguins of Madagascar

The opening moments of Penguins of Madagascar are so vibrant and funny, they betray the rest of the movie, which is frantic yet strangely leaden.  This attempt to turn the four scene-stealing espionage penguins from the Madagascar movies into leading characters who can carry their own movie is a miscalculation.  It does little to expand the characters or their world, and is never as clever or as funny as the opening scene would like us to believe.

The scene I found so enjoyable occurs right at the beginning of the movie, which is set up as a nature documentary, complete with Werner Herzog narrating.  Set "some time ago" (as a subtitle helpfully tells us), the scene informs us how the four penguins broke from their flock, decided to defy their place in nature, and become covert operatives who have the ability to break into Fort Knox in a scene just a little while later.  The team includes all-around leader Skipper (voice by Tom McGrath), the brainy Kowalski (Chris Miller), the wild and destructive Rico (Conrad Vernon), and the gentle and timid Private (Christopher Knights).  The penguins themselves are more or less interchangeable, with Private getting the most screen time, because his brothers don't feel he's that much of an asset to the team, and he wants to prove them wrong.  As supporting characters in the Madagascar films, the penguins are frequently funny.  But when they're forced to carry a 90 minute movie on their own, they come across as being thin and lacking in personality.

If someone were to quiz me on how to tell the penguins apart, I would probably flunk the test.  One talks a lot, one spews a lot of data and technical jargon, one communicates through a series of grunts, and one is cute.  Not exactly the kind of traits that you can build a story around.  The filmmakers try to keep things interesting by giving the penguins a rival, an octopus named Dave (John Malkovich) who has been holding a grudge against our heroes for years.  Turns out Dave was once a popular attraction at the Central Park Zoo, until Skipper and his brothers moved in.  Feeling rejected and blaming the cuteness of the penguins for being shunned, Dave has decided to take revenge by gathering an army of his octopus brothers, and disguising himself as a human scientist named Dr. Octavius Brine.  With access to the human's technology, Dave has managed to invent a weapon that can transform cute cuddly penguins into grotesque monsters.  Don't worry, the plan doesn't make that much sense in the movie, either.

As Dave sets his plan into motion, the penguins find out that there's another team of covert animals who apparently have access to high-tech technology like jet-propelled ships, rocket packs and tracking systems.  They call themselves the North Wind, and are comprised of a wolf (Benedict Cumberbatch), a polar bear (Peter Stormare), a seal (Ken Jeong) and a snow owl (Annet Mahendru).  The North Wind team intrigued me, as I wanted to know where they get their funding for their high-tech operation.  They seem to work for the government, though the movie doesn't say.  Actually, the movie tells us nothing about these characters, so they end up adding nothing to the film.  Even the amazing Cumberbatch is reduced here mainly to shouting silly puns ("Nobody breaks the wind!") or arguing with Skipper over what the best plan is to go after Dave.  The North Wind team often comes across like a failed concept for a toy campaign that somehow got haphazardly shoehorned into this movie's plot.

Penguins of Madagascar is brightly colored, and features a lot of frantic action sequences that whiz by at a moment's notice, and leave little impression on the audience.  Instead of being fast and fun, these scenes come across as hyperactive and targeted at a short attention span.  Kids up to a certain age may find this approach kind of fun.  Really little kids, I suppose.  The filmmakers were obviously at a loss at how to expand upon the characters, so they threw in a lot of action to compensate.  There's just simply no investment here.  The images flash upon the screen, but nothing sticks or stands out.  The end result is a rather joyless experience that generates few laughs, and ultimately feels like a cynical experience on the part of the filmmakers to see how far they can stretch the flimsy and undercooked material.

To be honest, while I did not think Big Hero 6 was anything great, it at least held my attention and is much better than this.  That's the movie to take the kids to this holiday weekend.  Of course, if you want to see a really special animated film, you'll have to track down a theater that's playing Princess Kaguya.  That's a movie filled with charm, drama, wit and imagination.  Penguins is a corporate product that's as synthetic and processed as the cheese puff snacks that its heroes like to munch on.

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