This movie focuses on four residents and stars of the Central Park Zoo in New York City who are also best friends: a lion (Stiller), a zebra (Rock), a giraffe (Schwimmer) and a pregnant hippo (Smith). When one of them goes missing, the other three break out of the zoo looking for him, and eventually all four are captured and put in boxes to ship them back to the continent their species are originally from: Africa. An accident at sea, however, strands them on the shore of Madagascar. Having had humans take care of them their entire life, the four know nothing of surviving in the wild, or that one of them, the lion, is genetically predisposed to eat his three best friends. Exploring their surroundings, the four friends soon meet the Malagasy locals (a type of lemur given to having loud rave-like dance parties) and their carnivorous enemies, the fousas. As the two sides try to use these four new, strange (and large) friends to their benefit, our heroes are also confronted with the reality of their predestined roles in nature... (and yes, it's a comedy :).

(voices) Ben Stiller (Alex the Lion), Chris Rock (The Zebra), Jada Pinkett-Smith (Gloria the Hippo), David Schwimmer (Melvin the Giraffe); other voice cast not announced yet.

The current voice cast is Jason Alexander, Madonna, Chris Rock and Ben Stiller, There's no word yet about which animal each actor will voice, but I'll make my guesses and see how close I can get. Here goes: Rock/Zebra, Stiller/Lion, Madonna/Giraffe, Alexander/Hippo. (11/28/01) Madonnia is the hippo, if she signs. Dark Horizons reports that Jennifer Lopez may also be considering voicing that role if Madonna ends up dropping out. (2/22/02) Animated-Movies reports that DreamWorks has given them the scoop that Madonna has indeed dropped out, replaced by Gwen Stefani, the lead singer of No Doubt. (5/19/03) Gwen Stefani appearently auditioned for the role of Gloria the Hippo, but didn't make the cut. So, the role has gone to Jada Pinkett-Smith instead (and the role is no longer expected to require singing). Also, David Schwimmer has signed on to replace Jason Alexander. Going back to who plays whom... I guessed Rock and Stiller correctly as the zebra and lion, and Schwimmer plays the giraffe.

Last week, I was invited to a tour of DreamWorks' Glendale facility to see a series of presentations about their next four animated feature films, with this being the third in line at this point. I should note that this is indeed a PDI production, but they seemed to have plenty of concept art in Glendale. The presentation mostly consisted of director Eric Darnell telling us the story, with dozens of concept art images plastering the walls behind him for us to follow. I had seen images of the four lead characters before (and you can too at AICN , AICN again and DreamWorks ; click on Films in Production), but the key to this movie is definitely the background art, which is loosely based upon French Impressionist painter Henri Rousseau imagined jungles, with bright colors and thick sepia-black outlines. DreamWorks is really trying something different with this movie, which is striving, in a way to depart from the goal of realism through CGI in deference for something more imaginative and playful. The character designs match the same basic art style, but what I didn't see is them in CGI full-motion, so I can't really say anything about that. So what did I think of all that DreamWorks laid out for me (and others in the group) to see? My first gut reaction was that of the four projects they showed me/us, this is definitely the movie most obviously targeted at the kids/family audience first and utmost. I'm sure that having Chris Rock and Ben Stiller doing the lead voices is going to attract adults too, but of the four, this movie's story was the most like, say, a traditional Disney story (something I'm sure DreamWorks just *loves* to hear me saying).

What is ultimately really going to matter here is whether people are entranced by the extravagant, Rousseau-influenced art, all done in beautiful computer animation enough to make it a hit. Whereas other upcoming DreamWorks CGI movies are focusing on visual details, this movie appears happier to soften the details and bend things to fit into an overall painterly diorama. Something like this has never been done before on a large scale, so this feels like an all-or-nothing proposition. So, will DreamWorks' big experiment pay off? People will either let themselves get wrapped up in this luscious version of nature, or they'll be turned off by how unrealistic it looks. My hunch is that more people will feel the former, but the latter will be a nagging problem. Of course, I say all this based on just concept art. My attitude may change when I actually see these painted characters move in 3-D. But, right now... the art is spectacular.