The Madagascar "freaks" are ready to roll again. Chris Rock, one of the core voice stars for the cartoon movie franchise, is excited to do it again. But he is also worried about maintaining quality.
"They've already called," Rock tells Sun Media about Madagascar 3, just as Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa made its DVD debut this week.
"It was weird," Rock, on the phone from his New Jersey home, says of Escape 2 Africa. "It was actually good! I think they did that with Shrek, too. They just figured it out."
But, as I remind Rock, Shrek 3 was an artistic bomb after two brilliant satires starring Mike Myers as the voice of the grumpy green guy. The same studio -- Jeffrey Katzenberg's DreamWorks Animation -- is behind the Shrek and Madagascar franchises, as well as the Kung Fu Panda phenomenon.
Rock has his theory about how animated franchises evolve. "The first one is like a pilot (for a TV show). And the second is like that great episode in season three. In sitcoms, it's like you're clicking on all cylinders, you know what I mean? Escape 2 Africa really, really, really, really clicked!"
That still makes Madagascar 3 a huge risk, as was Shrek 3. "There is a kitchen sink mentality that goes into 3," Rock explains of sequels to sequels. "They kind of overdo it with plots and things, you know what I mean?"
It remains to be seen if the third Madgascar will suffer that fate, Rock says. "I haven't seen a script for No. 3. You almost never see a whole script, by the way. You kind of get your part and I'm usually prominent in the movie so I can kind of decypher the movie just from my part. But it's like in Woody Allen movies: You just get your pages."
In the Madagascar movies, Rock provides the sassy voice of the crack-a-lackin' zebra Marty. His best friends are Ben Stiller's lion, Jada Pinkett Smith's hippo and David Schwimmer's giraffe. In the first movie, they escape from the Central Park Zoo and accidentally end up in Madagascar, guests of an insane lemur, King Julien (Sasha Baron Cohen).
The whole gang -- penguins and all -- crash land on the African plains for the sequel. Rock doesn't know where they will go next. But he loves animation voice work, even though these family movies don't let him swear.
"You don't get to say the raunchy stuff you normally say, but it's still my timing and my voice, you know. Let me put it this way: At Thanksgiving dinner, I'm kind of funny, too, and my mother and my aunts are around the table and I don't curse. And I think I do pretty good on Oprah and The Tonight Show and I'm not cursing and I'm not really saying the nastiest stuff you want to hear. And I make it work. Everything's time and place."
Success in animation has also freed him up in his overall career, Rock says, because is no longer "the desperate comic" looking for an edge and a place to perform.
"There is a definite sense of desperation with comedians that I kind of like to get away from," Rock says. "I say: 'Come on, relax, read some books, travel, live a life and then come back and do your thing.' "
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001LF4IA6/almosthuman
http://chitika.com/publishers.php?refid=almosthuman99
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to allmovies@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to allmovies-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/allmovies
For More Mailing Lists Visit
http://www.geocities.com/tvandmovies_2000/mailinglists.html
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
