Madagascar

We took the kids to see Madagascar last night.  It was enjoyable, but not as good as some of the other movies we have seen this year.  The girls loved the part when the lion, Alex, bit Marty the Zebra's butt.  They had already seen that in the previews,  but enjoyed it every bit as much in the actual movie. 

They also really enjoyed the music.  I had one reminder of just how old I am when Marty left the zoo and started strutting down the streets of NYC to the tune Stayin' Alive.  My eight year old turned to my four year old and said, "that is the song from Baby Geniuses!"  They are obviously too young to see Saturday Night Fever even if it were not an antique they had never heard of, but it still made me feel really old.

By the way, I had another one of those moments recently shopping with my eight year old.  Many of the swimsuits we were looking at were orange and bright pink with big, bold flowers.  I said that they were Brady Bunch designs.  My daughter looked at me like I was crazy.  She has seen a few episodes of the show on TV Land or Nick at Night or somewhere like that, but wasn't familiar enough with it to recognize the prints.  I think that Lizzie McGuire wore some of those retro prints on her show occassionally.  Now that reruns are all that is left of Lizzie McGuire, I am still hopelessly behind the curve. 

My husband noted that the Madagascar was not exactly an animal rights activist's dream.  The zoo where the animals lived in the beginning of the movie was more like a luxury hotel than anything else.   The best part of the movie for me and my husband was the penguins.  There is one line that is part of the penguins' story that we both cited as the best scene in the movie.

I enjoyed the references included in the movie that only adults would recognize, including one that had my husband baffled.  In a nod to the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man," there was a reference to a book "To Serve Lemurs."  You had to see the movie, and you had to have seen the Twilight Zone episode, for any of this to make sense.  There was also a reference to the Spalding character in the Tom Hanks movie Castaway. 

Madagascar gets four thumbs up from my family, but not as far up as they were for Robots.

Comments

[joe in Florida]

The penguins stole the show, loved the part when the finally got to their antartica habitat.