With the speed this went from release to dvd you have to wonder if its going to be any good, at least with their previous release Dreamworks did actually bother with a cinema release. Generally anything that goes straight to video/dvd is something to be suspicious about.
The movie has an odd start but you'll eventually release you are watching the back story behind Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller). Sadly its also in those opening few minutes that the whole movie jumps the shark (any sane adult is going to question how a baby lion cub could possibly survive drifting in a crate on the ocean from Africa to America without starving to death), but we're back on the island and jumping a whole new and completely different shark there instead with the idea that penguins can fly a DC10.
Using the crashed plane (If you remember it from the original movie) the animals decide to return to New York but run out of fuel and crash land and encounter people or more accurately tourists (so we have to assume they are in some sort of game reserve on the African mainland so they've flown at least a minimum of 263 miles from Madagascar, my guess from Google Earth would be they landed in Kruger National Park).
We have yet more shark jumping with Alex and an old lady fighting (like a fully grown Lion wouldn't tear her to pieces in seconds) then Alex reuniting with his parents (and yet more shark jumping as his wild parents are clearly mixing with prey species yet getting along as though they were friends). Marty the Zebra finds himself a herd (all of whom are voiced by Chris Rock as though just listening to one of him wasn't bad enough), Melman (still being voiced by David Schwimmer) find himself some friends in the giraffe world and even Gloria finds other hippos and to her delight male hippos.
Sadly King Julien (the stupid monkey from the island voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen STILL doing his bloody awful Jim Broadbent impression, why not just hire Jim Broadbent - he's way cheaper) & Maurice also survived the crash.
As for the guy voicing male hippo Moto Moto (Rapper and former member of The Black Eyed Peas Will.i.am) he just sounds like he has a sore throat or has watched way too many blaxsploitation films. Yet more shark jumping comes with the penguins stealing and being able to drive a truck and the old lady who survives being hit by it. I know all these things are done for comical effect but their just stupid and not possible.
Have these people never seen Hi-di-hi? Ted's 1st rule of comedy, realism. Rather unsurprisingly for a film with so little realism it DOES actually feature a scene of not only a jumping shark but the same shark also being jumped on. The penguins continually recycling the very tired 6 to 9/69 joke (which wasn't even funny the 1st time they said it) is pretty annoying however the Planet Of The Apes "but your so ugly) line is pretty funny if you get the reference.
Alex manages to screw up his coming of age ceremony and gets both himself and his parents banished which leaves his fathers rival Makunga (Alec Baldwin doing his very best Kelsey Grammer impression) in charge (how very Lion King), the zebras line about being "exactly the same" couldn't be more wrong as every zebras stripes are uniquely different. It seems no-one spotted that the penguins rebuilding the plane is actually a parody or reference to The Flight of the Phoenix.
We cover the storyline of Melmans love for Gloria (when Schwimmer speaks about how Melman would treat his ideal woman he just sounds like the same whiny old Ross Gellar from Friends insisting he was "on a break") and the animals discover their waterhole has dried up, Alex goes off to find out why (after fixing his relationship issues with Marty) and the other animals start to have doubts about Makunga being their Alpha Male.
King Julien suggests a sacrifice to the local volcano to appease the rain gods (Most definately stolen from the Tom Hanks film Joe Versus The Volcano) so they may possibly be in Arusha National Park in Tanzania as that has a volcano.
Melman volunteers and finally tells Gloria his true feelings. Alex & Marty discover the watering hole has gone dry due to a dam being built by the stranded tourists led by the old woman and Alex is captured, Gloria saves Melman from the volcano and Alex's father saves him from being dinner but Alex saves him from being shot by dancing for the New Yorkers who recognise him.
The dam is destroyed (the whole Chinese whispers scene is a good idea but isn't executed very well as there are much funnier things they could have appeared to have been saying( and the animals welcome back Alex & his father Zuba as heroes, what is really annoying is that a jumping shark is implied to have actually made the water come back.
What is even more annoying is the old woman who can beat up a fully grown wild African Lion. Theres a feel good ending which gets rid of the penguins (thank god) but the main characters are still left in Africa with the ending open enough to make a sequal which apparently is going to happen.
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