Alex quickly counsels Marty to work on changing his attitude, suggesting that he approach every day in a "fresh" way. That's difficult for Melman, as he's a hypochondriac and worries about all sorts of ailments he thinks he may have. It was one of Alex's favorite days, and he excitedly woke up his other friends, Gloria the hippopotamus and Melman the giraffe, so they could get themselves ready. Today was not only Marty's birthday, but "Field Trip Day" at the zoo, when all the school kids come. In fact, he's bored and upset that his life at the zoo limits his ability to enjoy life more fully by keeping his movements restricted. Marty puts the globe among a bunch of other "Alex" themed items that he'd been given over time. It's a tenth birthday present for Marty from Alex. It's a snow globe, with a miniature Alex figure in the middle. Marty reaches in and extracts a glass ball with a red ribbon on top. Alex tells Marty that there's something in his teeth, so Marty tells him to open his mouth and let Dr. Marty is jolted back to reality by his best friend, Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), who gets in his face and roars. He swings on vines, jumps, does flips and runs through a bunch of singing penguins. Now that could have been interesting, although one imagines children being led weeping from the theater while Alex basks on a zebra-skin rug, employing a toothpick.At New York City's Central Park Zoo, Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) is walking on a treadmill, daydreaming about running free in the wild. How would Goofy feel if Pluto wanted to marry one of his daughters? There is a moment at which "Madagascar" seems poised on the brink of anarchy, as the law of the wild breaks down the detente of the zoo, and the animals revert to their underlying natures. This is the kind of anarchy that always lingers under the surface of animal cartoons. At one point, driven wild by hunger, Alex even tries to take a bite out of Marty's butt. "Which is you," Marty the Zebra is warned. Alex misses his daily stacks of sirloin and porterhouse. Then the intriguing problem of the human/animal divide comes into play. Some of the locals think maybe the New Yorkers are obnoxious tourists, even though Alex stages his zoo act, much in the same sense captured prisoners of war entertain the commandant. The local population, primarily a colony of lemurs, is ruled by King Julien ( Sacha Baron Cohen) and his right-paw-man Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer). They're back in the wild, all right, but without survival training. On the way, a mutiny by rebellious penguins leads to them being swept off the deck, and washed ashore in Madagascar. The animals are captured, crated up and shipped off aboard a cargo ship to a wild animal refuge in Africa. One night he escapes from the zoo, and his three friends catch up with him just as he's about to board a train for Connecticut, acting on bad advice from the giraffe, who has informed him that is where "the wild can be found." If Alex likes it in the zoo, Marty has wanderlust. His friends include Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the Hippo ( Jada Pinkett Smith). Alex (voice by Ben Stiller) lives the good life in the zoo, dining on prime steaks every day, courtesy of his keepers.
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