Better than its awful title. But not that much better.

So yesterday I went to see "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," the sequel to 2005's kinda lame but endlessly quotable "Madagascar". Although it was better than its title and awful trailer led me to believe, it failed to capture the hilarity and quotableness of its predecessor (at least after only one viewing). The high point of the whole film for me was when Rico the penguin pulled out a switchblade to intimidate the lion.
Probably my biggest issue with the film is the character design on the new characters. The lion design that worked okay on Alex did not work so well on the million other lions, especially the creepy and unnatural bad guy lion voiced by Alex Baldwin. The hippos were okay but kind of weird. The giraffes didn't look anything like Melman. The big joke with the zebras was that they all looked exactly like Marty, but it just came off as lazy. The only new designs I liked were Alex as a baby and a baby giraffe.
Of course, there was plenty of penguins to go round, and their kick-awesome antics didn't disappoint. But overall, not quite as good as the first one. But I'm sure that after a couple more views I'll be quoting it, too.