It seemed like a day to clean out the slate of movies that had been on my list for a while. So for my second feature of the day, I headed down I-93 on the north side of Manchester, then up US-3 through Hookset to the Cinemagic complex (map).
Cinemagic is a small New England based chain of theaters. The complex in Hookset was very nice---a huge parking lot frozen on a very cold day in New Hampshire, and, as the marquee blared, an IMAX auditorium. I'm always intrigued by the amenities in these new complexes, and since this was my first visit to this particular chain, I lingered in the lobby to appreciate the cafe-style seating. I particularly liked the innovation of the main concession, which faced two directions, allowing sales to both the lobby and to the auditorium-access corridor on the other side of the ticket collection stand.
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa was still showing at about half a dozen locations around Boston, but I figured I needed to take care of it today before it got any scarcer. After all the heavy dramas I'd seen lately, it seemed appropriate to relax for an hour and half to watch a cartoon.
I'd seen the original Madagascar, having rented it last August in anticipation of the release of the sequel. I thought the first one was nice, light entertainment with a fun original premise. I expected the sequel would give the same impression.
The plotline was somewhat degraded from the fresh story of the original, relying on sabotage from a false ally, but this kind of thing always happens in sequels.
But something really struck me as odd about the whole thing, in a way I didn't notice about the first movie. I think it hit me about half-way through, at the moment when the animals in the wildlife park in Africa notice that their water hole has run dry.
A drought? We all know that such things happen in Africa. It is part of the brutal conditions of life and death in the wild. But that is not what has occurred. Instead we learn that the water supply to the refuge has been shut off. Uh...right.
All the animals were standing around nice and friendly---a community of lions amidst zebras, giraffes and other prey. It suddenly struck me that there was something extremely un-natural about the whole thing, even for a movie about anthropomorphic talking animals.
"Of course," I said later, ruminating about it. "It's the principle of maximum antireality. In 2008, we have gotten as far away from the underlying reality of the world as possible, where everything we know or learn from the news is the opposite of what it really is."
How could I have been so blind? Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa was the perfect movie for the Year of Antireality. It was obvious: the penguins who can't fly but who fly the plane. The higher primate chimpanzees who serve as the menial labor at the behest of the birds. The humans who hunt like savages, led by a rabid Jewish grandmother from New York, while the animals rationally build helicopters. It is a world turned upside-down.
The main exhibit of this topsy-turvy world of the movie is the love story between the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith). The female hippo is being courted by a studly popular male hippo, who is after her for her body. The giraffe is a timid soul who can't express his feelings. But he wins her away from the studly creature of her own species by telling her his timid feelings of love, and by proclaiming how we will wait on her hand and foot, and bring her flowers every day.
Not only is this romance cross-species (how would that work, really?), but the nice guy wins the girl from the bad boy by cranking up his enfeebled niceness until she finally notices how sweet he is.
Like I said, we have reached the Point of Maximum Antireality.
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