Tag: Tom McGrath

With the Penguins of Madagascar, every major animated release in the US in 2014 should now be reviewed on Gorgon Reviews. Hooray! Exciting!

Unfortunately it is the sequel/spinoff series to Madagascar, which I found to be very mediocre or bad. However, this one at least also had a TV show before it came out, so there is a lot of back stories with these characters and their adventures that I am wildly unaware of.

Bring on the penguins! They are cute I guess.

Holy, shit, we also get an Octopus? I am now ecstatic.

Skipper (Tom McGrath), Kowalski (Chris Miller), Rico (Conrad Vernon), and Private (Christopher Knights) are all penguins who make up a pretty unique fighting team. Or at least they think they are. Going on adventures, using code words, what have you. Recognize the voice actors? Exactly, because this movie isn’t sold on celebrities, it is sold on characters and people who are real voice actors, damn it.

Either way, while celebrating the 10th birthday of Private, directly after the events of Madagascar 3. While getting some sweet ass Cheezy Dibbles, they get kidnapped by Dave (John Malkovich, bring on the celebrities now!), an Octopus! Apparently Dave has had a shitty life of living in zoos all around the world, where he is always second fiddle and ignored thanks to cute animals like the penguins. PENGUINS.

So he wants to get rid of them all. Or make them ugly. Something like that. ALL THE PENGUINS MUST BE PUNISHED.

That should be enough plot for you. Spy movie guys. Lot of things happen. There is also another agent group, the North Force (Benedict Cumberbatch, Ken Jeong, Annet Mahendru, and Peter Stormare).

I will let you decide which voice should go with which character.

Shit, if you like Octopuses in movies, you are going to love this movie. Yes, Octopuses, mother fucker. It is the right way. They all reminded me of Octodad a little bit, especially since the main octopus is wearing a human costume sometimes.

In all reality, it was just an okay movie. I am glad that the penguins all had personality, but they didn’t really make me laugh all that much. I thought North Force was underutilized and the big bad guy plot was pretty lame as well.

There was one ongoing joke throughout the film, involving celebrity names and puns. They were fantastic and clever. Well done on that department.

But comparing it to other animated movies, the quality is definitely lower (although in line with the Madagascar animation, so at least they are consistent). It probably feels like an extended episode of the penguin TV show, so if you like the show, you will probably like the movie.

It could have been worse. It could have featured Firework over and over.

Ah, Hollywood has set out to ruin reintroduce another beloved cartoon franchise for the modern masses! This time it is Mr. Peabody & Sherman, based on Peabody’s Improbable History, a short featured on the original Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show.

Which is great. I know they did The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle about fifteen years ago, and it bombed, by why not the short associated with it? In fact, we need more shorts from shows to make it to the big screen. If I had to chose just one, I’d pick Justice Friends from Dexter’s Laboratory. Yes, that would make an excellent film indeed.

But only live action, like Underdog, another successful cartoon to movie reboot.

But I digress. It is this dog’s day to shine.

Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell) is the smartest entity in the world and he has invented a lot of things. The one challenge he had left to face was raising a son, however, so as luck would have it, he finds a boy Sherman (Max Charles) to adopt. Mr. Peabody vows to raise the boy right and teach him all about the world!

So he invents the Way Back machine (or “WABAK” but I never saw it written that way in the film) that allows him to travel time and space. Now he can teach him fun historical facts! As long as he doesn’t travel to a time where they already exist, because then there would be two of them which could have catastrophic consequences!

However, at this point, it is time for Sherman’s first day of school ever, which is also apparently first grade. There, he is picked on by a girl bully Penny (Ariel Winter, our second Modern Family cast member) and he bites her! Oh no! A social service lady, Ms. Grunion (Allison Janney) believes it is Mr. Peabody’s fault as a dog cannot properly raise a boy.

With Mr. Peabody’s integrity on the line, he makes a plan to invite Penny and her parents (Stephen Colbert, Leslie Mann) for dinner, to prove that he is a good parent and hopefully reconcile the relationship between Penny and Sherman. Unfortunately, Sherman shows Penny the Way Back and everything falls to pieces.

Also featuring the voice talents of Stanley Tucci, Patrick Warburton (yes, Krunk), and Tom McGrath.

“Now shut up Sherman while I go bang some pre-historic bitches.” Wow, Mr. Peabody used to be a jerk.

Ah yes, a movie about time travel, history, and learning! All with the potential for both kids humor and “smart jokes” without necessarily getting into the “adult joke” territory.

However, if you are going to make a movie involving time travel, you have to be prepared to be judged accordingly, regardless of intent. To me, there were a lot of flaws with the way time travel was presented in this movie. It created paradoxes (outside of the ones shown in the movie) and other bad time no-no’s, but chose to ignore all of them. Bah. It is not too hard to make a sensical time travel movie, this one just failed to do so.

Speaking of nonsense, the ending was a huge mess. Everything was bad, excrement was hitting the proverbial fan, chaos. But they had a plan to solve it! Yeah, it didn’t make any amount of sense, scientifically or otherwise. It worked in the movie and then it ended. Honestly, it felt worse than a deus ex machina. It just made me feel cheated.

Basically, the creators said that if they are going to make stuff up, they might as well go completely made up.

Other than that, this movie did have some enjoyable moments and jokes. There were nice puns everywhere, as a throwback to the original and a few touching scenes. However, the plot they give the movie is under developed and doesn’t even serve as a good excuse for time travel. I think Mr. Peabody & Sherman could have been so much more and easily turned into a huge franchise.

Oh well, at least I got the sweet 3D Glasses Add-On.

Ooh whats that, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted? I legitamately didn’t think I would go see that movie. “But you see all the movies!” Yes I know. But this one required word. I hadn’t seen Madagascar 1 or 2, so going straight to three would be silly right? Right! That is why I have a brief rundown of the other movies.

So just like I had to do with Spy Kids 4…I watched the first two over a few days, just so I could see the third in theater. I actually didn’t like the first one either, but thought the second one was much better, despite the dumb title. (They leave Madagascar and Escape to Africa…Because Madagascar totally isn’t a part of Africa).

Yes, this scene in the trailer is the real and only reason I wanted to see this movie.

For those not familiar, we have Alex (Ben Stiller) a lion, Marty (Chris Rock) a zebra, Melman (David Schwimmer) a hypochondriac giraffe, and Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) a hippo. They escaped from the NYC zoo, thanks to Marty running away, found themselves in Madagascar. They want to go back though. So thanks to the team of penguins, lead by Skipper (Tom McGrath) they made plane back for NYC!

But landed in Africa, to start movie 2. They also brought Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen), king of the lemurs and his cohorts. They get to experience true freedom and wild, but don’t like it. The hippo and giraffe get married. The lion meets his parents, and saves the day. And an annoying subplot with an old lady.

But they finally get to leave for NYC! Or Monte Carlo, in Europe, the third movie, because that is where the penguins went with a vast fortune to gamble and party. Their simple plan of get the penguins/monkeys and fly a plane doesn’t work. As animal control gets involved, one Captain Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand), who really really wants to kill a lion, makes it her goal to capture the animals and kill the lion. Fuck. But thankfully they escape on a train, for Rome, posing as circus animals.

There they meet Vitaly (Bryan Cranston) a russian tiger who jumps through hoops, Gia (Jessica Chastain) a female leopard who wants to trapeze, and Stefano (Martin Short) an italian seal who wants to be blasted out of a cannon. Yep. So their new plan is to travel with this failing circus, hopefully sign a deal to tour america, and return to their NYC Zoo to live out the rest of their days in happiness. Err..

And here is why I will probably not watch this ever again.

This movie is pretty polarizing for me. Liked a lot, hated about the same amount. Gah. The lemur? He was generally funny. Always seemed drunk and singing, but his relationship with bear wasn’t as funny. They used a plot point where they eventually are found out to be zoo animals, not circus animals, causing the entire circus to turn on them and not care. Despite the fact that they just helped plan and pull off the most kick ass circus thing ever. “You lied to us, you guys suck now, despite your clear talents that we just enjoyed!”

Similarly, the message is kind of weird. Err, so animals belong in shitty zoos, with like zero space? Most zoos aren’t like that now. But to have that be the overarching goal, leave the wild, leave the circus, and go to a ZOO. Yeah. Especially weird that their two options come down to zoo or circus, clearly both the best place for animals. Hmm.

I didn’t like the seal, or the animal control lady. She had a team rocket feel to her, blasting off, and coming back. And even though returning the lion home, still trying to kill him. What in the fuck? If she is fine killing a zoo animal, she could do that at home, and I don’t understand the obsession.

But the jokes were pretty good, a lot of pop culture references, a lot of Katy Perry and great visuals for the animals doing circus thing. I am disappointed that this movie also felt the need to throw in “I Like To Move It”. Come on, there is man more obscure 90s songs that need love too.