The Penguins of Madagascar (2014), PG, ★★★

The penguins are back.

Adorable little furry penguins. You cannot resist on how small and cute they are but also how brave they are to tackle the blizzards and other events impacting their survival, especially when male penguins have to carry the eggs underneath their fur for warmth. (Yeah, look it up on the Internet, read about it or watch a documentary about penguins.) However, I am not going to be reviewing about me the realistic nature of penguins. No, this is an animated feature about the penguins from the Madagascar trilogy. They were hailed as a great group of supporting characters and based on their own first movie this time around, it is not a memorable film but it is a funny and enjoyable movie.

In a hilarious opening, ten years ago, in Antarctica, a documentary filmmaker (Werner Herzog) is looking at a colony of penguins. Three rebellious penguins, Kowalski, Rico and Skipper (Chris Miller, Conrad Vernon and Tom McGrath) notices an egg rolling away and rejects the egg at first because "it is nature", but, they chase after the egg until the documentary filmmaker and the boom mic operator shove them off the cliff and onto a ship. The penguins fight some leopard seals off and blast themselves off the ship, causing the ship to explode. As the penguins celebrate, the egg hatches and Private (Christopher Knights) is born, and they vow to have adventures together.

The penguins really just have adventures throughout the whole movie as they go to a vault but pass it for a vending machine that produces a banned snack, Cheesy Dibbles. But, the vending machine is not what it seems since octopus tentacles take the penguins away and they are pulled into the sky by a chopper. They are taken to a secret laboratory in Venice where they are in the lair of Octavius Brine (John Malkovich), which is just a disguise to cover Dave, a beloved octopus, whom the penguins "stole their thunder" from. But, they join forces with the North Wind, consisting of Agent Classified, a wolf (Benedict Cumberbatch), a baby seal, Short Fuse (Ken Jeong), a snowy owl, Eva (Annet Mahendru) and a polar bear, Corporal (Peter Stormare) to stop Brine from destroying the world.

One of the penguins chewing on Cheesy Dibbles.

The movie is full of sly jokes and quick action that speeds the film along. Most of the jokes are more adult-oriented than some of the jokes that are intended for children. I laughed at most jokes and they are quite clever, however, I cannot maintain myself when the story takes over. I felt that the story involving the penguins trying to stop a villain from taking over the world is just routine. They are more like James Bond stuff and it is was too silly, but it was fun. A much better animated film was Despicable Me, but if focused on a villain being forced to be good because of his three adopted daughters and that is an exciting premise. However, this movie and Cars 2 (a bad Pixar film) does not supply the spy plot with much substance, just wit and style. But, this movie is much better because of the characters' wit and dialogue.

The third Madagascar film where they all go to the circus still remains the best film but I would rank it second before the first two movies. However, this movie would just make me want to watch it with another little cousin or another child who I would need to babysit or be forced to babysit because of the laughter. It is inconsistent with the premise and the stuff involving the Shanghai Zoo did not quite work me that much, but, overall, it is a nice little film that sort of surprised me because we just watch the Madagascar sidekicks just do their own thing with their own films. The trend has started already with Kronk and Tigger, the latter is kind of good, but sad. But, the trend does not result well until this movie came along. We just have to wait for Minions to come out next year.

***