The story places us directly after the events of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted with our four favorite penguins: Skipper (Tom McGrath), Kowalski (Chris Miller), Rico (Conrad Vernon) and Private (Christopher Knights). From here, they depart from the circus and send themselves on a mission to celebrate Private’s birthday and buying Cheesy Dibbles, a discontinued product, from Fort Knox. However, Private begins to feel unimportant to the team.
The real visual variety picks up when the penguins are suddenly kidnapped and brought to Venice where we meet Dave (John Malkovich), an octopus who disguises himself as Dr. Octavius Brine, a human alias. Dave was once an adored octopus at Central Park Zoo that soon turned sour after being booted from his popularity levels once the penguins arrived.
The penguins are eventually saved by the “North Wind,” a Canadian undercover inter-species task force. This task force includes their leader, a wolf named Classified (Benedict Cumberbatch), a seal named Short Fuse (Ken Jeong), a overly muscular polar bear named Corporal (Peter Stormare), and an intelligent snowy owl named Eva (Annet Mahendru).
Soon Dave’s real intentions are shown when he hacks into North Winds computer system, indulging about a new secret weapon, dubbed the “Medusa Serum” that he plans to use to destroy all the penguins that stole his fame from around the world.
The penguins now take on this fight from the “Most Remote Base,” which happens to be in Madagascar.
Without delving too much into the plot, the movie is hilarious and witty. Children will love it as well as the penguin’s abilities to survive impending disaster with luck and whatever else they can pull out of Rico’s bottomless stomach. Although, the older crowds patience might be thinning towards the end with action sequences that just seem like a bad sugar rush that wears off quickly.
Despite its smaller scale of adventuring, the animation achievements extend so well into character designs and their reactions as well as the broad antics of the characters, which lead to the movies joyful sense of mischief. “Penguins of Madagascar” overall deserves its 4 out of 5 stars and a big screen adventure of their crazy antics.
