Look alive, Private! Mission Silver Screen is a GO! You’re watching Beyond The Trailer’s
review of Penguins of Madagascar...
All joking aside, the Penguins are on a mission here - a rescue mission! Who’s in danger?
Dreamworks Animation. Rise of the Guardians, Turbo and Mr Peabody and Sherman all vastly
underperformed at the box office, and How To Train Your Dragon 2 got off to a very slow
start. Wall Street hasn’t been enjoying this financial roller coaster, so - in desperate
need of a win or, at the very least, afraid of another devastating loss - Dreamworks Animation
swapped out original flick Home at the last minute with Penguins, a spin-off for one of
the studios most successful franchises. Can a black and white air-drop into the holiday
movie season save Jeffrey Katzenberg and his company? They will be getting an assist from
Hasbro, as the toy company is rumored to be in negotiations to merge with Dreamworks Animation
- as no financial institutions were willing to purchase the studio so it could go private.
Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private will be getting an assist on-screen as well from the
North Wind, an elite undercover inter-species task force with considerable firepower - and
star power. Fan favorite Benedict Cumberbatch voices their leader, Classified, while Ken
Jeong and Peter Stormare round out the team. Annet Mahendru is also onboard, perhaps best
known for her work on FX’s The Americans. However she also starred in Escape from Tomorrow,
the low-budget indie thriller infamous for shooting in Walt Disney World and Disneyland
without permission. I guess former Mouse House employee Katzenberg couldn’t resist... Then
of course, John Malkovich voices our villain while Werner Herzog even joins in the fun
as the Narrator. Ironically, the only thing keeping this mission from being a crab-cake
walk are the penguins themselves. After they practically stole the show in the Madagascar
movies, they got their own TV series on Nickelodeon which ran for three seasons - and was quite
successful. In fact, this Penguins movie was originally envisioned as Direct To Video.
And while the show hasn’t been on the air since 2012, and has its own continuity outside
of the movies - including this one - there’s some danger audiences might still think of
these little guys as small screen entertainment. Plus they’ll have to compete with plenty
of big screen entertainment, as Disney’s Big Hero 6 is still playing while Annie and
Night at the Museum 3 are closing in. So, will Skipper and his team dominate once again?!
Or
are they finally out
of their depth...?