DreamWorks spun off its penguin sidekicks, and the gamble paid off

The penguins got their own movie, and DreamWorks spent $132 million to find out whether that was a good idea. Penguins of Madagascar opened in the United States on November 26, 2014, a spin-off of the Madagascar series that takes place after Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. It grossed $374 million and still counted as a disappointment. That math tells you most of what you need to know.

Trailer, via Universal Kids.

Four Penguins and a Stolen Egg

The film runs 92 minutes. It is directed by Eric Darnell and Simon J. Smith, written by Michael Colton, John Aboud and Brandon Sawyer, and scored by Lorne Balfe. The tagline promises “the movie event that will blow their cover.” The movie does not blow anything.

It opens in Antarctica, where penguin chicks Skipper, Rico and Kowalski rescue an egg from leopard seals on an abandoned whaling ship. The egg hatches. The trio adopt the chick as their brother, Private. Tom McGrath voices Skipper, Chris Miller voices Kowalski, Christopher Knights voices Private, and Conrad Vernon voices Rico.

Fort Knox and the Cheesy Dibbles

Ten years later, the Circus Zaragoza tour is in Kentucky. The penguins break into Fort Knox to get Cheesy Dibbles from a vending machine for Private’s birthday. Private wants to be seen as a meaningful and valued team member. The heist is the joke, and it is a thin one.

Then the penguins are kidnapped and taken to a submarine in Venice. There they meet Dave, a Giant Pacific octopus voiced by John Malkovich. Dave was once an attraction at the Central Park Zoo until the penguins upstaged him. He was transferred between zoos and aquariums around the world, upstaged by penguins at every stop. So he disguised himself as a human scientist named Dr. Octavius Brine to get revenge.

That is the whole engine of the film: a grudge held by a cephalopod.

Classified and the North Wind

Rico swallows a vial of Dave’s snow globe collection and his Medusa Serum before the penguins escape. Fleeing through Venice, they are rescued by the North Wind, an inter-species intelligence agency. Benedict Cumberbatch voices Classified, a Eurasian wolf whose name is classified. Peter Stormare voices Corporal, a polar bear. Ken Jeong voices Short Fuse, a harp seal demolitionist. Annet Mahendru voices Eva, a snowy owl intelligence analyst.

The penguins show the North Wind the serum. Dave calls to reveal he has much more of it. The North Wind gets alerts that Dave is kidnapping captive penguins worldwide. Classified decides Skipper’s team is a liability and tranquilizes them onto a plane bound for a safe house in Madagascar.

John Malkovich Outclasses the Script

Malkovich is the best thing here. Dave is a villain with a real grievance and a fake human face, and Malkovich plays him with a relish the script does not earn. Cumberbatch gets the second-best material as a wolf who will not say his own name, and Skipper just calls him Classified.

The rest of the North Wind is a set of gimmicks. Corporal is muscle. Short Fuse is demolition. Eva is the analyst. None of them get a moment that lands.

A Release Calendar That Tells the Story

Penguins of Madagascar was the last feature film produced by Pacific Data Images before the studio closed on January 22, 2015. Read those two rows together. The film that ended a studio is a buddy comedy about a vending machine.

What the $374 Million Actually Means

The film grossed $374 million on a $132 million budget and underperformed by DreamWorks’ standards. Along with Mr. Peabody & Sherman earlier that year, it lost the studio $57 million. Those are the numbers, and they are the most interesting thing about the film’s commercial life.

A spin-off is supposed to be cheap upside. Take the characters people already like, put them in their own story, keep the costs down. DreamWorks did not keep the costs down. It spent like this was a mainline entry and got a spin-off’s returns.

The Script Cannot Carry 92 Minutes

The penguins work in Madagascar because they are a gag with a limited shelf life. Four of them, marching, barking orders, committing crimes. The joke is that they are a paramilitary unit inside a children’s cartoon. Stretch that to 92 minutes and the joke has to become a story, and the story here is a revenge plot built on a swallowed vial.

The film has no idea what to do with Private’s arc. He wants to be valued. He is told he is valued. The movie moves on. The emotional beat is announced and then dropped.

Penguins of Madagascar is a 5.3 of 10. It is not a disaster. It is a competent, brightly animated spy comedy with a good villain and a script that never finds a reason to exist beyond the characters’ existing popularity. The box office disappointment was not bad luck. It was the correct read on a film that spends like a franchise and thinks like a short.

box office · DreamWorks Animation · John Malkovich · movie review · Pacific Data Images · Penguins of Madagascar