While at first the main four (Marty, Alex, Melman, Gloria) are rather happy at their new environment, they quickly realize that it's not all that it seems, and that their new temporary home is splitting the four apart. In Escape 2 Africa, we follow the New York zoo animals, the psychotic penguins, the monkeys, and the lemur leaders as they unexpectedly are stranded in the middle of Africa. That being said, it's still a fun, entertaining, and unpredictable movie that continues the zaniness that made the original a personal guilty pleasure of mine. While the laughs are definitely here, the attempt for emotion constantly makes this film slows down and keeps it from being a superior installment when placed against the original. Madagascar is about the cast and how they interact with each other and the conflict that is presented onto them. A bit of heart can definitely propel an animated movie into masterpiece status (see Toy Story and Finding Nemo) however this is not the franchise to do it. In the second installment, you see the writers trying to give the franchise a dosage of heart and sentimentality, which is what made Shrek the instant classic it became. The zany cast of characters easily exceeds the number of memorable characters in Shrek, and contained more humor and creativity than all of the other Dreamworks animated flicks before and ever since. The content was light, but it was so satisfying that it wound up being Dreamwork's second best animated movie of them allbehind Shrek. The original Madagascar was a break from the typical mold in family animated entertainment it was fearless, didn't slow down to teach a lesson, and was not afraid of entertaining solely on physical humor.