Madly Madagascar 720p - (2013 Lang: English)

Madagascar Valentine's Day special

I love the Madagascar series. The original wasn't excellent, but it was pretty good fun, Escape 2 Africa was an improvement over the first, but Madagascar 3 was even better! So, when I heard that a valentine's day special was made for the franchise, I watched it online and enjoyed it. OK, it's not an excellent special by any means, but it's pretty good.

The storyline is predictable, bit it had some sweet romantic moments with the main and minor characters, especially the romance between Gloria & Melman which was really cute. Some of the jokes aren't nearly as funny as the films' humor, but I was given a chuckle here and there. The characters are still likable as they were in the previous films and the voice acting including Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Sacha Barom Cohen, and others, is solid, but the animation comes across as the best aspect of the entire special.

Overall, Madly Madagascar is predictable like I said before, but as a fan of the franchise, I'm recommending this to those who grew up with the original and loved it!

Madly Madagascar is a direct-to-DVD Valentine's Day short film starring the characters from the Madagascar film series, and taking place during the second film. Produced by DreamWorks Animation, it was written and directed by David Soren. The special was released on DVD on January 29, 2013. Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett Smith returned to voice the main characters, except for Sacha Baron Cohen, who was replaced by Danny Jacobs.

It was the first DreamWorks Animation DVD release to be distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Special features on the DVD include the Over the Hedge short film Hammy's Boomerang Adventure and the short film First Flight.

Valentine's Day is one of Alex's favorite holidays back in the zoo, he was practically showered with Valentines from numerous admirers, but now that he's in Africa, he's finding that Valentine's Day is not what he was used to.

Taking place near the end of the events of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Marty meets an Okapi girl who strikes his fancy, but she's not that interested until Marty finds a love potion (thanks to the penguins + King Julien) and puts it on now she is paying him attention. Unfortunately, so are 99.9% of the females (and males) on the savannah.

At first this is great, but after a while, Marty finds that being irresistible isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's Melman's first Valentine's Day with Gloria, and as such, he's determined to make it a perfect one, even if it means going a bit overboard. It's Gloria's first Valentine's Day with Melman and as such she's quite excited but he seems to be ignoring her. At one point, when Melman is spotted by Gloria, she thinks he is dumping her on Valentine's Day. King Julien finds a bottle of "Love Potion No. 9" and decides to try and sell it to the various animals on the savannah. Skipper's bobble-head doll wife, Dollface, has 'run off' with another bobble-head doll.

First of all, let me make clear that I am talking about the 22-minute version here. apparently, there is also a version out there with the same title that is a somewhat extended version and runs for over an hour, probably includes other Madagascar-related short films, but that is not the one I watched here. Writer and director David Soren made this little movie here 2 years ago and if you are into animation, you may also have come across his most famous work so far: "Turbo", which is a 2013 release as well. And he also made "Merry Madagascar" 4 years earlier, so it's really no new territory for him here. Sadly, experience does not pay off in this case. It's nice to see all the voice actors from the movies of the successful franchise on board for a short film too, but this one came short in terms of fun, but also in terms of emotion, which is quite a pity as they really had all the opportunities to make this a truly heartfelt movie. And there are some incongruences in terms of the plot as well. For example, Marty enjoys all the attention and being party king etc. and only one scene later he really seems all sick of it. Not credible. Thumbs down for this short film. If the next full feature will be as weak as this one here, they'd better not make it.