shadowycat

As with the comment ahead of mine: it's all about the penguins. They should have their own movie.

We were chanting: more penguins, more penguins. At the screening we just saw, people who loved the first Madagascar movie waited excitedly for the magic to begin... I LOVED the first one. Interesting note: I liked the first one better, but my BF thinks this one has a better and deeper plot and pointed out in particular that while in the first one Gloria (the hippo) was the butt of many fat jokes, in this one she is celebrated just for being beautiful.

The whole movie is breathtakingly beautiful. We didn't see this on IMAX but I bet the IMAX version will be a treat.

Sascha Baron Cohen's King is again the hands-down favorite, I heard a ripple of joy murmur through the theater at everything he said and did, although my personal favorites (after the Penguins) are Maurice and Mort, the King's cohorts.

BF was also teasing me mercilessly because (and I'm nearly ashamed to admit it) there's one scene that had me totally teared up! Yes, I cried. Can't spoil it - go see the movie and tell me after if you know what choked me up! The film did not hold the attention of some of the very small children at the screening we saw, because some portions of the film only involve adult storyline concerning the adult star characters (Alec Baldwin, Jada Pinkett Smith, Chris Rock, and so forth) but when the little characters are on screen (the baby lion in particular is DARLING) the children present were absolutely captivated.

It's fun. It's not the greatest movie of all time, but it's very fun and children will want to watch it again and again.

Although as a documentary there were moments the timing was off, or I found myself wondering where they were going with this or that bit, over all I have to say we laughed throughout. Don't get me wrong, it was VERY funny. Everyone in the audience was laughing, it was funny like a night of stand-up, and rare for a documentary to be that funny.

However, I have to say it was a little uneven. I get the feeling that the longer they were at it, the less patience Bill Maher had with people... and I also got the feeling that often, they were a) just making it up as they went along and b) didn't really resolve things well. Some parts of the film were carried off much better than others, and there wasn't a sense that the filmmakers were always in control of their subjects.

On an 'it is what it is' basis, it was the funniest film of the year. It was great to laugh that hard. But, because it did present it as a documentary, documentaries have a point or tell a story, and with Bill Maher stating right at the outset that his point of view is "I don't know... " well, that's where it fell flat as a documentary... because the documentary style alludes to some sort of conclusion.

And maybe if the summation was more lofty and philosophical I would not have felt lost, but I got this sense that Bill was over it, ready for the end of the show, ready to get on to something else, and perhaps even sorry he'd opened the can of worms.

Part of what is funny is what real people said and did and were captured as being. Since I've grown up on the coasts, in the blue states, I was a little astounded to see some of the 'red state' lifestyle revealed as it was in this film.. but we've seen stuff like this before.

I was reminded of some Daily Show segments, for instance. I was also reminded of cable network programs like "The Naked Archaeologist" and "Taboo". OK.. that's it.. it was more like a TV program than a feature film. I was happy to pay for it and everyone there had a great time, but it didn't feel like a feature documentary... didn't answer a lot of questions.

I know this all sounds like I'm being terribly critical, but I'm THINKING about it. I need to stress and stress again: it was a blast, it was hilarious, and it did raise questions.. it did show aspects of religious behavior here and in other countries in a revealing light... but it was not as fully reconciled as I would have preferred. At the end of the day I felt like OK we're done now, Goodbye.

There's a lot more I would have recommended doing with the subject matter, and I do believe things could have been presented in less of an aimless style...

But despite all this criticism, OMG it was sooooo funny. The entire audience I saw with film with were totally side-splittingly cracked up. So I do recommend it, just remember: this was Bill Maher and Larry Charles, not National Geographic or 60 Minutes.