I was standing at the barricade of a music festival in Texas last year waiting to see Chappell Roan, when suddenly everyone started screaming. I figured they’d spotted Chappell, but I was proven wrong when the girl next to me shouted, “Oh my God, it’s Chris Rock!” to which everyone around me reacted with only louder screams. My immediate response was, “Marty the zebra from Madagascar? No way!”. Apparently that is not the normal reaction to seeing Chris Rock, given the confused looks I received from everyone around me. 

Growing up, the Madagascar movies were classics in my household. They were the go-to movie if I was having a sick day, or if I’d just come home from a bad day at school. I always wanted to go to the Central Park Zoo to see Alex the lion, or Melvin the giraffe. I was quite disappointed last December when I did get to go, and had to find out the hard way that there are in fact no lions or giraffes living there. 

For a while I forgot about Madagascar. In middle school I was too busy on Roblox, and for my first few years of high school I was too obsessed with Mean Girls. Recently, though, I rediscovered the animal-filled classic. The franchise has grown quite a bit from when I was a kid, with three movies and lots of spin offs, including one focusing on the fan-favorite penguins. 

The first movie is forever my favorite, though. The whole thing is great, but the best parts are one hundred percent King Julian’s scenes. For some reason there is nothing as funny to me as an animated lemur singing “I like to move it move it”. I’m not really sure what that says about me as a person. Mort, King Julian’s number one admirer, is a close second favorite character though. 

I really could not explain to you the full plot of any of the movies. It’s not really the type of movie you watch to catch every detail of the plot; it’s more of a fever dream type movie, the type of thing they’d put on while you got a cavity filled at the dentist as a kid. I think that’s the beauty of it though. You could watch one scene, and still find something to laugh at or be entertained by. 

It’s also one of the movies that stays just as funny as you get older, since there’s jokes that you don’t necessarily pick up on when you’re younger.