While not in the league as Shrek, this offering from DreamWorks Animation is serviceable family entertainment. Chris Rock and Ben Stiller provide the voices for Marty the zebra and Alex, a preening lion, who enjoy a comfortable existence in Manhattan's Central Park Zoo until Marty expresses a desire to return to the wild. What follows is a predictable but engaging series of mishaps that land the pair in Africa, along with anxious giraffe Melman (David Schwimmer) and straight-talking hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith). The pace drags a bit in the last third of the movie and the attempts to infuse Marty and Alex's relationship with pathos are just too half-hearted and curiously uninvolving. But the film is always marvellous to look at and the sight gags come thick and fast. Among the highlights are Sacha Baron Cohen (TV's Ali G) as the funky but quite mad King of the Lemurs and a pair of posh British monkeys who propose a unique form of literary criticism.

Four animal friends get a taste of the wild life when they break out of captivity at the Central Park Zoo and wash ashore on the island of Madagascar.