Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is a worthy, if inconsequential sequel to its 2005 frontrunner. While still high on laughs, this revisit throws in a lot more “drama,” diluting some of the fun factor that drove the original.

At the end of the first film, Alex the performing lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the sassy, motor-mouthed zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the neurotic giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the big-is-beautiful hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) were stranded on the island of Madagascar after taking a “vacation” from the Central Park Zoo. Ready to become Manhattanites again, the foursome (along with fellow refugees, the tough guy penguins), repair an ancient, crashed airplane to fly them back home. Unfortunately, their handiwork only gets them as far as the central plains of Africa, where they make a crash landing. Set to the music of Out of Africa, the four friends find themselves on a picturesque savannah, carpeted with thousands of friendly animals.

Here the film sets up a series of individual challenges each of the protagonists must overcome. Alex is reunited with his dad Zuba (the late Bernie Mac), with whom he was separated as a cub. But Zuba’s rival, Makunga (Alec Baldwin), sees Alex’s arrival as a way to wrest control of the tribe for himself. Most kids will recognize that Madagascar 2 treads into The Lion King territory. Both deal with rites of passage, paternal expectations and pretenders to the throne. For the adults, there are interesting parallels with the character of Alex and Stiller’s earlier role this summer, the narcissistic actor Tugg Speedman in Tropic Thunder. Both address showboating egocentricity within the world of performance, especially when the performer has no clue that fantasy has been swapped with reality.

Meanwhile, Marty begins to question his uniqueness when he discovers all the other zebras look and talk exactly like him, and Gloria is wooed by a flirtatious Romeo interested only in her (extra large) body, much to the dismay of a jealous Melman who loves her from afar but is convinced their inner-species love is unattainable.

Supporting characters should never be more interesting than the mains (manes?). Yet that is the case with Madagascar 2. Sacha Baron Cohen returns as Julian, the nutty king of the partying lemurs, with a hilariously enlarged role culminating in an attempt to appease the water gods by tossing one of the main characters into a boiling volcano. The old granny (Elisa Gabrielli), who so efficiently dispatched with Alex in the first film, returns as a vacationing New Yorker now single-handedly keeping the jungle at bay with her formidable martial-arts moves. But for my money, there’s nothing funnier than the hardscrabble penguins, flipping open menacing switchblades one moment and haggling over union dues with monkeys the next.

It’s not that Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa has no plot, it’s just that the story is so slight and undistinguished, that you don’t even realize there was a plot until the film ends. Somewhat disjointed, the sequel to the cheerful 2005 original is pleasant enough, but hardly represents a genre at the top of its form. Still, what is a mildly amusing diversion for adults should still prove to be deliriously entertaining for kids.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.