Penguins of Madagascar offers perfect holiday hijinks for the penguin-lover in all of us
Super spy teams aren’t born – they’re hatched. Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private are back in full throttle as furry agents of international espionage, and their antics are as funny as ever in DreamWorks’ ‘Penguins of Madagascar.’
Fewer things in life are more adorable than a cuddly, chubby penguin. Penguins have long been my favorite animal ever since my city’s zoo invested in a state-of-the-art penguin exhibit in which you can watch the graceful black and white birds playfully frolic and swim underneath your feet (looking through a glass floor) as they go from one side of their arctic backdrop to the other. Last year, a childhood wish finally came true for me – I finally had a behind-the-scenes, one-on-one personal penguin encounter at an aquarium in which I was given a half-hour with several penguins and actually got to pet some of them.
The cuteness of penguins and the amount of attention and special exhibits such as the aforementioned ones that are given them is very much the heart of the plot of DreamWorks Animation’s Penguins of Madagascar. That’s right – the hilarious penguins who pretty much stole the show for me in the previous Madagascar movies were finally given their own full-length feature. Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private are back in full throttle as furry agents of international espionage, and their antics are as funny as ever. I especially enjoyed the beginning of the movie, which sets the background for how this lovable quartet first came to be by showing them as baby penguins who don’t want to continue aimlessly marching in formation across the frozen tundra, as an overzealous penguin documentary crew looks on.