Madagascar Blu-ray delivers stunningly beautiful video and superb audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release
Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller) is the king of the urban jungle, the main attraction at New York's
Central Park Zoo. He and his best friends Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe
(David Schwimmer) and Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) have lived their entire lives
in blissful captivity, with regular meals provided and an admiring public to adore them. Not
content to leave well enough alone, Marty allows his curiosity to get the better of him and,
with the help of some prodigious penguins, makes his escape to explore the world he's been
missing. Alex, Melman and Gloria go after him, but before they can go wild in the streets,
they are captured, crated and put on a ship to Africa... to be ultimately set free. When
those plotting penguins sabotage the ship, Alex, Marty, Melman and Gloria find themselves
washed ashore on the exotic island of Madagascar. Now, these native New Yorkers have to
figure out how to survive in the wild and discover the true meaning of the phrase "It's a
jungle out there."
DreamWorks Animation has built a rather crass reputation for itself in the ten years that it has been releasing feature films to the public at large. Beginning with the hand-drawn Prince of Egypt, a film unabashedly aimed at the Abrahamic crowd, DreamWorks has since proven it has no scruples in doing whatever it takes to play with the big dogs in the United States' animation market. Quickly dropping hand-drawn films to follow the "winning trend" of computer-generated animation, the studio made a killing from its cynical faerie tale satire Shrek in 2000. DreamWorks is notorious for its use and heavy promotion of celebrity voice talent in their films, prioritizing that aspect to the point that everything else in the film - including the story - is an afterthought. A fair few films from the studio have come and gone, utterly forgettable in their execution.
Imagine the surprise then, when a film like Madagascar comes out. Blossoming out of yet another premise development rivalry with Walt Disney Feature Animation - this time with the latter's film The Wild - DreamWorks released their iteration a year ahead, and proved to have done it far better. In Madagascar, we are introduced to four generic zoo animals - the giant hippopotamus Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), the African lion Alex (Ben Stiller), a reticulated giraffe named Melman (David Schwimmer), and Marty, the eternally optimistic plains zebra (Chris Rock). Living a pampered existence at the Central Park Zoo, each creature has their own take on the gilded cages in which they live. Alex loves the attention from visitors, making sure to put on his best performances for them every day. Melman has become a hypochondriac and Gloria is contented enough. Marty, however, has a bad case of wanderlust and spends his free time daydreaming of "the wild," a concept that is strictly an abstract idea to the captive-born animals.
High definition... so delectable!
When Alex, Gloria, and Melman hold a party for his tenth birthday, Marty makes a wish to "go to the wild," much to the chagrin of his pals. Despite their attempts to talk him out of it, Marty sneaks out of the zoo and heads for Grand Central Station. Aghast, his friends follow after him when they realize he's gone missing. Four large African mammals loose in Manhattan obviously causes quite a stir, and the quartet are shipped off to a Kenya reserve when well-meaning humans mistake their mass escape for a desire to be free from captivity. Along the way, the ship is overtaken and steered off course, thanks to some wily militant penguins wishing to return to their native Antarctica. The four are thrown overboard, washing ashore on a mysterious tropical island - yes, Madagascar.
All but Marty panic when they realize their predicament, wishing desperately to return home. Matters aren't made much better when they encounter thousands of wild, hedonistic lemurs, led by a deranged ring-tailed specimen, King Julien XIII (Sacha Baron Cohen). They are awed by the intimidating size of the zoo animals, and wish them to become allies to scare off their enemies, the foosa - a play-on of the word fossa, large relatives of the mongoose and the main predators of lemurs in the "real world" wilds of Madagascar. But the zoosters are facing a more pressing problem - Alex is getting hungry. After days of no food, the cat goes savage and almost kills Marty. To try and protect his friends, Alex isolates himself deep within foosa country. At a loss, the three remaining friends can't believe their eyes when the ship returns; the penguins didn't exactly find Antarctica to their tastes. Now to face the challenge of bringing their famished friend Alex back from the brink in order to go home together...
Madagascar is more appealing than the typical DreamWorks fare due to its lack of trademark tasteless, pop culture referential humor. Yes, the characters are essentially animated A and B list actors, but for the most part the voicework doesn't scream "Lookit me! I'm a brand name celebrity!" For all their foibles, the urban dwelling animals are appealing, and they engage viewers young and old. The character and production design, incorporating pushed angles and highly stylized reality, is quite lovely, and a real rarity for mainstream computer animation in general, but DreamWorks in particular. The humor, even references to other films or the like, exists for its own sake and does not halt the story just to make a crack at some recent event in pop culture history. Madagascar is one of the more underrated films from the DreamWorks canon, and despite the studio's efforts to wear out its welcome - the film's impending sequel or the overuse of the 14 year old house single "I Like To Move It," for example - Madagascar is a delightful, just plain funny film with a high amount replay value. Having it now in high definition is a real treat.
Encoded in AVC and averaging about 30 Mbps, Madagascar looks simply stellar. So many fine details of fur, skin, and leaf texture, muddled in standard definition, come alive on Blu-ray. It shows all the smallest touches the animators labored to put in - even the sparse little "mustache" of hairs on Gloria's upper lip. Comparing shots between the two formats reveal an even greater amount of picture present; the DVD was slightly and inexplicably windowboxed, while the Blu-ray has filled in those gaps with the film's original image. Being a purposely surreal and stylized film, Madagascar features wild color and some bizarre lighting, all of which are vividly reproduced on Blu-ray. Arguably more so than the DVD, which looks almost washed-out in comparison.
Contrast is excellent on this feature, and every detail stands out. Blacks are deep and rich, and shadow detail is quite good without ever showing crush problems. Whites are nicely balanced and do not bloom out of range. No artifacts or mastering problems are apparent whatsoever. The fanciful color palette makes for some wonderful eye candy, and the pristine digital nature of the film's CG animation ensures that the transfer is as vivid as can be.
Boasting an impressive array of options, Madagascar comes to Blu-ray with an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track, as well as Spanish, Portuguese, and French Dolby Digital 5.1 options. The lossless TrueHD audio is quite impressive, especially given the good handful of scenes throughout with real action or musical performance of some sort. The overplayed, yet still somehow entertaining, lemur rendition of "I Like To Move It" is especially good with high definition picture and sound. Dialogue is clear and well-balanced, and even with Cohen's deliberately heavy Indian accent on his character of King Julien, every mused aside or indignant retort is picked up. The left and right speakers give a full impression of the front presentation overall, following dialogue or providing most of the ambiance and scoring. Rears fill out the soundscape with an enveloping effect in the jungles of Madagascar or Times Square. The LFE is put to good use, again during action or musical scenes, and gives ample weight to both without overwhelming either. In short, Madagascar's audio is a great fit with its visuals, and the multiple language options are an appreciated touch.
As would be expected, most of the extra features on Madagascar are kid-oriented, or have too much of a "press kit" feel to them with the chipper content, but there is still a good amount of material to be had here for all ages. Most significant of which is the Audio Commentary with the film's two directors, Tom McGrath and Eric Darnell. They are an obviously enthusiastic pair who love their work in animation, and talk about the differences between Madagascar and other DreamWorks films, the technical challenges of producing the film, and all the little every day anecdotes in between. Little details like side character names and what species of Malagasy wildlife were used in the film are revealed, as well. Some of the most amusing tidbits are how the crew fit in little ad-libbed bits of dialogue from the star voices and the humble crew voices alike.
The Mad Trivia Pop-Up is a subtitle option that details relevant film trivia for a passing scene - anything from technical facts to character quirks. The Madagascar Penguins in A Christmas Caper is a 12 minute short presented in high definition MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital 5.1. Premiering in front of the Aardman animated feature film Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the CG short sees three of the military birds making a harrowing rescue attempt for their fourth member, who was "kidnapped" while trying to obtain a present for the Central Park Zoo's lonely polar bear Ted. Mad Mishaps is a DreamWorks Animation standard on its home video releases; showcasing some of the more bizarre rendering errors during production. Running a brisk 1˝ minutes, the feature is always fun to watch to try and pick out the most unintentionally disturbing error - like facial features blowing up or somesuch.
For reference, the three making-of pieces are all presented in standard definition with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. Meet the Wild Cast, running about 8 minutes, is by and large your standard cast interview segment, talking with the star quartet as well as other significant names like Cedric the Entertainer and Andy Richter. Behind the Crates is the longest behind-the-scenes themed featurette, clocking at about 23 minutes. The inception, design work, and development of the film is depicted in breezy summary, showing the filmmakers' trip to the island nation for inspiration among other things. The Tech of Madagascar is a brief 5 minute look at the tools developed and used on the film. Animators with previous experience and developed software from Shrek and Shark Tale gave them the tools to work with for the design and technical challenges of the film. It feels a smidgen promotional with the multiple mentions of using HP processors for their work, but overall it gives a clear taste of the care that went in to the film's development.
The Penguin Chat is about 9 minutes, featured in high definition MPEG-2. It's a whimsical in-character chat with the "stars" of the film, the four escapist adélie penguins Skipper, Kowalski, Rico, and Private. Enchanted Island, in standard definition running about 8 minutes, is a travelogue type summary of the island's culture, plants, and wildlife. Design inspiration of French artist Henri Rousseau is discussed here, as well as a profile of the country's iconic baobob trees. The many native lemurs were, according to the filmmakers, ripe for caricature, with their inherently humorous anatomy. Lastly, the DreamWorks Animation Jukebox features eight video segments and music from previous CG animated DreamWorks films. All of the clips are presented in high definition MPEG-2, so glimpses of much of DreamWorks' recent library can be had in this feature.
The separate "DWK," or DreamWorks Kids, section provides supplements that are supposedly designed strictly for the rugrats. It contains an "I Like To Move It Move It" Music Video in standard definition, as well as a Learn to Draw feature giving sweeping instructions on drawing the faces of the film's furry stars.
A light animated feature that relievedly breaks the trend of DreamWorks' standard humor, which often has a short shelf life and is generally rather crude. The voicework isn't stilted, the story is well-executed, and the character design is inspired. The attention to detail is utterly awesome, resulting in a film that is not only entertaining, but fun to simply study for its surreal beauty and vivid colors. And never has Madagascar looked better than its current release on Blu-ray. Featuring awesome picture, great sound, and a good selection of extra material, Madagascar on Blu-ray is a must-have.
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