Madagascar
Four spoiled zoo animals, one island, and a lemur king ordering everyone to move it, move it. Madagascar arrived on May 27, 2005, as a DreamWorks bet on pure silliness that landed with kids and never quite left.
Madagascar was directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath and released by DreamWorks Animation on May 27, 2005. The premise was simple: Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer), and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) leave the comforts of the Central Park Zoo and wash up on the island of Madagascar, where they discover that being a tourist's fantasy and being a wild animal are very different things.
Sacha Baron Cohen's King Julien, the lemur king, stole the frame with every line — and his cover of Reel 2 Real's "I Like to Move It" became the franchise's theme song. Tom McGrath voiced Skipper, leader of the scheming penguins who didn't just steal scenes; they escaped the film entirely and built their own career, landing a Nickelodeon TV series of their own in 2008. The movie grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide on a $75 million budget despite mixed reviews. Critics shrugged; kids weren't listening. Sequels followed: Escape 2 Africa in 2008 and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted in 2012 — but the original is the one burned into the DVD players of the mid-2000s.
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