There’s a flaw in the title. Who exactly is doing the escaping to Africa?

In this second instalment, the story revolves around the “origin” of Alex the lion. And the writers are going with a story arc that has worked before, and are blatanly taking a lot from the pages of The Lion King. Even the protagonist voiced by the omni-present Alec Baldwin reminds a lot of Scar. But while Scar was a ruthless threat, Makunga here is silly and pathetic. Well, it is a comedy after all, right?

As now without having to deal with introductions, the four stars each begin to develop their own sub-plot to contribute to the main storyline. Even the karate-Nana has been brought all the way from New York but that was the most boring character for me. Sasha Baron Cohen’s loony King Julien was surprisingly entertaining as he got more screen time and his jokes were more pronounced than before.

However, there just wasn’t enough time to really look at each of the main characters, let alone the sub-cast which also included the penguins. The running time of the movie was just too short to be effective as each scene was rushed along one after another.

The only upside was that there wasn’t much drama involved as the movie focused on comedy and laughter. But even so, it meant that there wasn’t anything serious to make the older audience care for the characters. One could say there just wasn’t any heart in the movie.

The only thing I was impressed with were the colours of the scenery. Some were truly breathtaking, for a cartoon.

Rating: 5 / 10

(all images from imdb.com)