Too much of everything

Beautiful, moving film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The gang is leaving Madagascar on their home-made balloon when Julien and his lemur subjects shoot them down. They're actually shooting for the red night goblin. When coal starts raining down, Alex fires the shot that takes down the goblin who turns out to be Santa Claus. The reindeers leave after fighting with the penguins over the cold war between north and south poles. The concussed Santa decides to stay with the lemurs. The gang decides to deliver the gifts themselves pulled by the penguins flying with magic dust.This is a Christmas TV special. The great thing is that the characters are what they are supposed to be. Julien would definitely shoot down Santa Claus. This has all the main Madagascar characters. The penguins have a lot of fun. This is solid work from the family friendly franchise.

Merry Madagascar is a made for television special that sees the zoo animals trying to escape Madagascar and get back to their zoo in New York before Christmas.They try to escape by a hot air balloon which is shot down by King Julius and his band of lemurs who mistake them for the Red night goblin.This is because every year on December 24th someone flies through the sky showering coals at Julius. Alex the lion shoots down this villain and discover that its is Santa Claus and he now has amnesia.Alex and the gang have to save Christmas by delivering the presents and reindeer's and penguins need to put their old rivalry aside.The animation short, it is only about 20 minutes long and is a festive cash in but their is enough pizazz in the story to keep the young ones interested with a dash of Romeo and Juliet thrown in as the penguins with the help of magic dust help the animals deliver the presents.The animation is rather vanilla but good enough for a television special and DVD extra.

Dreamworks usually sucks at making movies, but now they seem to fail at making Christmas specials.I mean, Christmas time is the perfect time to make a Christmas short, but this one just sucked. It was the typical Santa Claus with give not get messages in it. Plus the jokes weren't that great, there was a lot of side distractions (really? Penguin and Cupid?) as well as just plain old inappropriate "take advantage of Santa" moments.I know that you cannot mention Christ in anything these days, for fear of offending people, but if you don't mention Christ, then it really isn't a Christmas special, rather it's a holiday special.But I give them a 5 for effort.

The brand new holiday adventure stars everyone's favorite Central Park "zoosters" from Madagascar and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. Merry Madagascar begins when Santa and his sleigh unexpectedly crash-land on the island, giving the jolly gentleman a case of amnesia. So it falls to Alex, Marty, Melman and Gloria -- along with the ever-inventive Penguins -- to deliver the presents and save Christmas. And it doesn't hurt that Santa's Sleigh just might be able to make a little trip to New York City, so they can finally return to their beloved home. But during their appointed rounds, the four re-discover the magic of giving -- and that it is ultimately more important than their own wish to return home. Also included is a long-lasting North Pole/South Pole rivalry between the Penguins and Santa's reindeer, plus magic flying dust and a King Julien-based holiday called "Julienuary."