Blu-ray Movie Reviews

A pack of not-so-wild animals experience some serious culture shock when they move from the Big Apple to the Mighty Jungle in this computer-animated comedy. Alex is a lion who enjoys a charmed life as one of the leading attractions at a zoo in New York City's Central Park. While Alex and his pals Marty the Zebra, Gloria the Hippo, and Melman the Giraffe are happy with their lot in life, they occasionally have a certain curiosity about the outside world, and when the zoo's penguins decide to make a break for it, Marty follows them into the city. Alex, Gloria, and Melman set out to find Marty before he gets into trouble, but they're a bit too late, and soon the zookeepers have decided that the animals are restless and need to be returned to the wild. Soon the critters find themselves living on the coast of Madagascar, where they quickly discover they aren't quite suited for living in the wild.

I didn’t have very high hopes for this one when it originally came out. I’m not a big Ben Stiller fan but the comedy and great animation won me over. Plus, who doesn’t love the penguins?? With the sequel due to hit screens later this year it is great to be able to see it again in HD before the new one hits screens. I just wish we could get some more of Dreamworks’ animated offerings soon.

Madagascar has always had a rather simplistic animation style but it works quite well in HD. Textures and character dimension are the highlight and make this a standout for fine object detail. I did think some of the background imagery was a tad soft compared to some other CG animation I’ve seen, but it was never distracting. The rich color palette of the jungle sequences is dazzling in HD and will serve as demo material for quite a few people I’m sure.

The Dolby TrueHD soundtrack is a good one but I’ve never been real blown away with the sound design for this film. Dynamics are good but never go quite to the level I’ve seen with some other recent animated films. The songs in the film fill up the room though and there is no lack of spatial design. Deep bass is there when it needs to be but the track can be a bit laid back at times.

My favorite extra by far is the HD presentation of the penguins Christmas caper. I loved this one back when it was first released on DVD and I was overjoyed to see it included here in HD. There are also quite a few theme features that offer some good laughs for fans of the film. Most of the supplements are in HD and there is even a trivia pop-up.

It is great to see Dreamworks releasing more of their animated favorites onto Blu-ray. Hopefully we’ll see more very soon. They’ve done a great job with this one and I’m sure fans of the film will be more than pleased.