MANILA, Philippines?Like the animated feature that came before it, ?Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa? is colorful and fast-paced enough to engage the attention of young audiences and amusing enough to keep their parents, well, amused. Picking up where the first movie left off, it shows our stranded foursome from the New York Zoo finally on their way back to the Big Apple. However, their travel plans aren?t exactly foolproof, seeing as their plane is held together by twigs and duct tape, and their flight crew is made up of maniacal penguins.

Identity crisis

While they do get off the island, the quartet only manages to crash-land in a reserve on mainland Africa, where Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller) discovers that he happens to be the long-lost son of Zuba (the late Bernie Mac), the alpha lion of a pride and the de facto king of the reservation.

Alex isn?t the only one going on a journey of self-discovery. His best friend, Marty (Chris Rock), finds himself in the middle of a herd of other zebras who look and sound like him, and he suffers from identity crisis! Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) feels the urge to get herself a boyfriend?the basso profundo-voiced Moto Moto (will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas)?while Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) struggles to tell her that he loves her.

Meanwhile, there?s a group of lost humans from New York wandering around, headed by the tough, purse-wielding granny character from the first movie. Then, there?s a smarmy wannabe-alpha lion, Makunga (Alec Baldwin), who?s hatching a plot to get Alex and his dad banished from the pride forever! And, let?s not get into what King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his chief flunky (Cedric the Entertainer) are doing, or what the penguins are up to!

Self-imposed limitations

There are too many things happening in a movie that?s only 90 minutes long. The production squeezes as many characters, plotlines and pop-cultural references as it can into a story whose elements are culled from every journey-of-self-discovery tale out there. It?s far from brilliant, but you?ll enjoy it more than you think.

?Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa? may not occupy the same plane as, say, anything created by Pixar, but the film works well within its self-imposed limitations. The animation is just about perfect down to the very last hair, the landscape shots are occasionally stunning, and Alec Baldwin?s character, Makunga, actually smirks like he does!

However, while the four main characters have the most screen time, they?re almost always outshone by funnier, more original characters, like the mad and campy King Julien and, of course, the single-minded penguins. These friends from the zoo have gone a little stale, with the exception of Melman the hypochondriac giraffe, voiced with just the right tremulousness by Schwimmer.