DreamWorks Animation has had an interesting slate of productions in their 20 year run as a major animation studio. For every success there’s ‘Shrek’, ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and ‘How to Train Your Dragon’. For every miss there’s ‘Shrek the Third’ and ‘Bee Movie’.

While 2014 was a good year for the company in terms of quality made animated films such as the great ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ and the often entertaining ‘Mr. Peabody & Sherman’, 2015 is off to a rough year with ‘Penguins of Madagascar’.

The film essentially begins where ‘Madagascar 3’ concludes (even though I haven’t seen the third film, I am fully aware of that film’s circus theme) as we see the likeable and cute gang of penguins, which includes Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private. But the penguins are accidentally caught in the villain’s plans, so it’s up to the penguins of Madagascar (see what I did there) to save the day.

This is a spy movie, and while that concept fits perfectly with these characters, than it did with Pixar’s ‘Cars 2’, the movie’s story isn’t in fact up to the standards of either ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ or ‘Mr. Peabody & Sherman’.

The movie instead relies itself full of gags and slapstick humour, and while I must admit it does occasionally get some laughs here and there, you can’t help but think of the film’s lack of a solid story, with new characters so forgettable, it’s not even funny.

‘Penguins’ might have the good one-liners and some good laughs here and there, but the film overall just couldn’t match it its humour with a story that is just simple and predictable.

Kids might love it, but adults might only love the jokes the film conjures up, instead of pleasing the whole family.

 

Score: 5/10

Published: January 5th, 2015