Similar to Madagascar but not the same this is the story of a zoo lion and his friends who race off to save the lion's son who has been shipped back to the wild. The movie is the race to find the son before he gets to the wild and what happens once they get there.
I have to start by saying the voice cast is top notch here. Everyone does an excellent job. However I must single out Jim Belushi and Eddie Izzard as turning in classic animated performances. Belushi plays a street smart squirrel who is in love with a giraffe and he is a ball of fun. Its clear why he is the best friend of Keifer Sutherland's lion. He is a joy to behold.
Even better is Eddie Izzard as Nigel, a koala who is totally crazed. Izzard is in constant motion and is constantly chattering about everyone and everything and he effectively turns a movie about a lion and his cub into a movie about a deluded koala with a tenuous grasp on reality. Izzard's Nigel will probably go down in history as one of the great cartoon characters of all time.
This is a movie with fantastic animation. It all looks great. The director and some of his crew are from the effects team that made Terminator 2 and other big budget special effects movie look so great.
The problem with this movie is that it was made by guys who until this film made their living making soulless special effects for soulless action films. The net effect is a soulless film. There is no pacing, there is little sense of danger. Worse the characters inhabit a world that isn't real. In this world, especially in the New York scenes, no one exists except the characters. They drive all through the city and encounter no one. There are no other cars on the street. To be frank there is no sign of life anywhere. Its terrible. It kills the film. Its sad but as alive the actors are their animated characters, while looking good, come across as dead constructs.
Still the movie is worth seeing. Eddie Izzard, with an assist by Jim Belushi make it worth seeing. Clearly abandoned by Disney in theaters, you should make a run by this on home video or cable, where its less than the sum of its parts construction will be less annoying.
