Penguins of Madagascar (2014)

Sometimes it can be the smallest things which can charm you as you are watching a movie. Little things which succeed in immediately grabbing your attention and pull you fully into the movie. With this movie that happened immediately during the opening of the movie, because the first thing you hear is the voice of one of my favorite directors (and voices), Werner Herzog. The cold landscape and his voice immediately made me think of his own documentary Encounters at the End of the World and the fact he agreed to do the voice work for this movie proved to me why is so fascinating, really a man full of surprises. It immediately sold the movie to me and the movie had hardly started.

The penguins have always been a nice distraction in the Madagascar movies and although I didn’t watch them, they already had their own popular TV show. That popularity has now resulted in a spinoff movie which is set during the circus scenes in Madagascar 3. Dr. Octavius Brine (John Malkovich), also known as Dave, is a octupus who hates the four penguins because everyone liked them more than him and that meant it was done with his popularity. He has become a smart villain, whose plan is to capture all penguins in the world and make them ugly in order to have his revenge. It’s up to Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private to defeat him, with some unexpected help of another group of secret agents who are sure they are better than the group of penguins.

The result is a very energetic movie, with lots of humour and action. The rivalry between the two spy teams is a source for many jokes and a subplot about how the penguins met Private is also nicely brought to a close. Malkovich is extremely funny, with very cleverly written dialog. The way he talks to his army of smaller octopuses is especially funny to movie fans as he is constantly using the names of actors and actresses in a sentence to address them. A movie which will entertain both young and old.