For the longest time, we struggled finding a film that O wouldn’t be afraid of (and which is on Netflix, probably our biggest mistake). We ended up settling for “Madagascar” which we thought would be less scary since it’s all about animals, and ever since I saw a trailer of it many years ago, I was low-key interested in this film that promised to be a fun comedy.
Madagascar
It was a fun comedy indeed, but somehow the jokes were not nearly fun enough for me to want to see any more of it (the films must have been popular since there were so many sequels after all). I remember that apparently children really like the Cars movies while parents tend to hate it, and that this leads to a kind of conflict when kids are into a show that parents would find mind-numbing. We always tried to find things we like too (“Octonauts” and “Winnie the Pooh”!) but to me “Madagascar” is the perfect example of an easily digestible film with a fairly clichéd story that we watched just so we can see a film with O. It serves as a good.
The film is not all bad though – it’s nicely animated, the characters are likable and the storyline is suspenseful and speedy enough for the audience to not be bored watching it. Personally I prefer kids’ films that are a little more thoughtful, and nowadays there are so many of them (Up, Zootopia, Inside Out, even Finding Dory and so many more that don’t immediately come to mind) that there is this expectation that a good children’s film must offer more than just a fast-paced silly adventure.