Tierisch wild (2006)

Tierisch wild: Directed by Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams. With Kiefer Sutherland, Jim Belushi, Eddie Izzard, Janeane Garofalo. An adolescent lion is accidentally shipped from the New York Zoo to Africa. Now running free, his zoo pals must put aside their differences to help bring him back.

“At first, this appears to be a rip-off of u0026quot;Madagascar,u0026quot; with New York City zoo animals leaving the comforts of u0026quot;homeu0026quot; for the wilds of Africa. However, it is a totally different story and feel to it, more serious and sentimental than u0026quot;Madagascar.u0026quot; Personally, I like u0026quot;serious and sentimentalu0026quot; but not in animated movie, at least not to the degree it was in here. I preferred the other u0026quot;NYC zoou0026quot; film to this one because u0026quot;The Wildu0026quot; lost almost all of its great humor in the last 20-30 minutes. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe first 50 minutes of this film was spectacular. I was thinking, u0026quot;Wow, another great animated film. How many is that in the past year or so?u0026quot; The jokes were excellent, the characters mostly funny and the animation superb. The dark, rich colors in here are magnificent. This is a beautiful movie! The minor characters are the best in here: the snake, koala bear and squirrel. Eddie Izzard, Richard Kind and Jim Belushi, in particular, are great in their voices of these characters. The two crocodiles that the wandering zoo animals meet in the sewers are hilarious. They produced the biggest laughs, at least with me. The major characters: the lion (Keifer Sutherland), his cub (Greg Cipes) and the giraffe (Janeane Garafolo) were all a little too much on the serious side.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSpeaking of serious: the last third of this film totally switched gears. I wonder how this went over with very young kids and their parents? It got too serious, frightening in spots (for little ones) and then the usual corny Disney ending. Itu0026#39;s too bad: this could have been super if they had just continued doing what was working the first 50 minutes.”