A Review of Madagascar

It’s currently 2022, and yet I can’t stop thinking about the film Madagascar from 2005.
My baby sister told me she was watching it after she had finished going on and on about
Encanto. I think my mom must be happy to finally get to watch something else and to have my
sister sing something other than “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”. Streaming services have made
the generational gap between movies almost irrelevant - thanks Disney+. I didn’t think that my
little brother’s favorite movie from childhood would somehow also become my little sister’s.

My little brother has autism, and, because of this, he can watch a movie over and over
again without stopping, and, as such, the rest of the family often has to watch whatever movie he
is into at the time over and over again without stopping. Around the summer of 2011, his hyper
fixation was Madagascar (2005). I think I saw that movie thirty or forty times before he finally
shifted to a different movie (the stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). By the end of
his run with the show, I could recite most of the lines. Sadly, I have lost this ability to the
passage of time. I never minded watching the same movies, but I didn’t love watching any of
them as much as I loved watching Madagascar (2005).

The movie follows four animals - Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris
Rock), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) - in
New York’s Central Zoo as they end up in Madagascar through a series of mishaps. Alex, the
main attraction of the zoo, yearns to return home, but his friends find paradise on the island. He
slowly loses his mind and turns predator before his friends bring him back and realize that Alex
needs to be in the zoo. By the end of the movie, the animals have boarded a ship to return home,
only for it to run out of fuel. This sequel bait ended up leading to three more movies, three
animated series, four short films, and a Christmas television special. It was Dreamworks’ cash
cow for 9 years, and they wrung it dry after its 2006 Kids’ Choice Awards win for Favorite
Animated Movie. The plot itself is fairly simple, but the four main characters all have unique and
distinct personalities that allow all different types of children to connect with them.

As a child, I connected with Alex. And, in some ways, I still do. His need for routine, his
stubbornness, his isolation in fear of hurting others, his paradoxical extroverted nature, and his
persistence. However, there is one scene in the movie that I’ve always deeply resonated with.
After sharing his desperation to leave with his friends, Marty proclaims he doesn’t understand
why Alex would want to leave. Alex draws a line in the sand separating their sides of the island:
people who want to go home on one side and people who want to stay on the other. At first,
Gloria and Melman stay with Alex, but slowly they begin to understand Marty’s reasoning and
leave Alex to join in the island’s decadent lifestyle. Alex doesn’t get why the other animals don’t
see things his way, and he can’t get himself to understand the other’s reasoning. The line in the
sand becomes him versus them. It becomes a barrier that he can’t cross despite putting it up
himself.

I think about this scene about twice a week.

Whenever I’m on a panel or a podcast, the topic of social communication eventually
comes up. People ask me what making friends is like for me. What the world is like for me. My
brother isn’t the only member of our family with autism, but instead of movie hyper fixations, I
got extreme social deficits and anxiety. I wish that I could project this scene into their heads
when they ask. Instead, I have to fumble my way through explaining it until it loses whatever
metaphorical meaning it held in the first place. There’s never been a better representation of what
my social experiences feel like than this silly scene in a children’s movie.

I want to connect with people, and I want to cross to the other side, but rules I made up in
my head prevent me from doing so. It would be so easy to let go of those rules and be with
everyone, but I just can’t. Even if I could, there’s an emotional line for me as well. I restrict
myself emotionally, and when this is coupled with the distance made by my anxiety, I have yet
another line to cross. This one, I didn’t make myself so it’s less representative of the scene from
Madagascar (2005), but it feels the same.

My childhood brain always thought that Alex’s friends should just kick away the line and
end their dispute, but I understand now why they couldn’t. Alex drew it, so he’s the only person
with the ability to get rid of it. He needs to learn to cross it without getting rid of the line,
otherwise where is the personal growth?

Of course, by the end of the movie, Alex has crossed the line in the sand. He’s reunited
with his friends, and they work together to see things from each other’s perspectives. I wonder if
the day will ever come when I’ll meet someone patient enough to wait for me and to talk to me.
Someone who will hold my hand as I step over the invisible barrier that keeps me from the rest
of the world. I hope it does, but I’ve lost faith that it will.

In this sense, the original Madagascar (2005) had a semblance of emotional depth that
the later movies lacked in favor of more childish entertainment methods. It was a pleasant
viewing experience for both children and adults with an exceptional voice-acting cast. The
themes of friendship, understanding, and self-discovery encapsulate the transition from
childhood to young adulthood in a way that is easily digestible for the young target audience. It
even features a rendition of “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong. But I don’t love
the movie for any of these reasons. I love the movie because of the connection I made with Alex.
Because I felt represented and seen as a child in a way I couldn’t explain until later in life.
However, the movie itself is not very good. My review of the movie makes it seem like a
cinematic masterpiece. It is not. For me, it holds emotional and sentimental value, but for the
average audience member, it is entertaining and then forgettable. The script is dry, and the
character’s jokes often fall flat. While the four main characters all have unique personalities,
these personalities become caricatures that they barely deviate from or grow from. The most
entertaining characters end up being the side penguins and lemurs instead of the main cast. Pixar
dropped the ball on this film, and you are much better off watching Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3,
or The Incredibles.