Those who think that the series gradually getsbetter versus those who think it gets worse, whether or not they liked the first one.
Those who felt that the first movie was either average or awful and the sequels saved it versus those who think the first movie is the only good one.
Covered Up: The series' various covers of "I Like to Move It" are all much more popular and well known than the original Reel 2 Real song.
Crazy Is Cool: The penguins wouldn't be the badass heroes they are if they weren't completely insane. Trailers for the first film prominently featured Alex proclaiming "the penguins are psychotic!" — he's right, but it's not at all a bad thing.
The Penguins—Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private—are a quartet who balance ingenuity with Comedic Sociopathy. During the first film, aiming to return to Antarctica, the Penguins escape their zoo confinement and take over the ship freighter to help them navigate to Antarctica. Disappointed with the outcome, the Penguins head to Madagascar and aid with the saving of Marty from the feral Fossa. After their plane crashes along with the heroes in Africa, the Penguins devise a scheme to build a more adept and reinforced one— robbing several tourist groups of their vehicles through ploys, leaving them stranded. Aiding the heroes with rescuing Alex from the humans, the Penguins then have the new plane ram the dam they had created, stopping the water shortage within the animal's reserve. Heading to Monte Carlo and gathering a huge amount of spoils, the Penguins aid the heroes to escape the villainous Captain DuBois. During the film's climax, the Penguins initiate "Operation Afro Circus" to save the heroes from DuBois, resulting in her and her cronies being defeated and shipped off to Madagascar. After casually infiltrating Fort Knox for Private's birthday, the Penguins end up against a scheme by the mastermind Dave who's out to rid the world of penguins—with them ending triumphant. With an incredible amount of loyalty to each other but a comedically callous regard for everyone else, the Penguins are the ultimate Wild Card of the series.
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: Nana is a seemingly innocuous old lady who loses her unpleasant demeanour from her previous appearances but proves herself to be one of the toughest characters within the series. After the Penguins rob her tourist group's jeep, Nana heads into the woods to avoid being eaten by animals where she meets other stranded groups. Rallying the humans to become survivors, Nana has them be able to create an inhabitable land for them—building a dam to conserve water and having the villagers hunt animals for food. When the humans capture Alex, Nana almost has him cooked to be eaten, commending the other survivors for the capture. After attempting to shoot both Alex and Zuba after their performance—noting it to be beautiful—Nana stares down the plane as it comes to crash into the dam with no fear. Surviving the hit and noticing Makunga holding her handbag, Nana beats the Smug Snake and leaves the film dragging him by the ear.
More Popular Spin-Off: The films on a whole are generally mixed, some liking them and some not at all. The two primary spin-off series, The Penguins of Madagascar and All Hail King Julien, have both received far more consistent praise overall.
"I Like To Move It" for the entire series and the first film.
Meanwhile, the instrumental piece "Zoosters Breakout" by Hans Zimmer is the instrumental piece that is the Signature Song for the entire series.
So Okay, It's Average: None of the movies are bad in a traditional sense, they're entertaining and inoffensive. But the stories and characters are considered to be somewhat one-dimensional; general consensus is that one can only enjoy the movies when one prefers comedy and timing over a good story.
Quite a few viewers have called Mort a squirrel, because of his buck teeth and bushy tail. He's actually a mouse lemur, which is a primate, not a rodent like a squirrel or mouse.
King Julien has sometimes been called a raccoon because of his ringed tail.
Awesome Music: The music in each level and mission perfectly reflects the mood of it, such as music in the later stages of "Mysterious Jungle", which really reflects the creepiness of Madagascar's jungle. The sequel manages to make its soundtrack sound more epicthan the first game.
Breather Level: "Jungle Banquet" and "Back to the Beach" are fairly laid-back compared to the levels immediately before and after them, as both simply involve searching for objects in an open world at your own pace rather than trying to reach the end. They also serve as the only levels where the playable characters can be switched around via the Totem Poles (though while the former has all four main playable characters, the latter is missing Alex due to taking place shortly after he goes feral).
Game-Breaker: Gloria in the GBA game. While not as mobile as the others (Marty has better jump height and can run, while Alex and Melman both have access to double jumps) Gloria is a lot more useful. On top of having a Shockwave Stomp that has some serious range and being the only character with Super Not-Drowning Skills, she also has a Goomba Stomp from the moment you can play as her that is absolutely broken. It starts the moment Gloria starts decending, is a One-Hit Kill on most enemies, and is the only attack in the game that can destroy the razor grass on the island. In fact you can beat most levels playing as Gloria just by walking along the bottom edge of the map, since she makes most of the danger from the levels easily avoidable while occasionally switching over to Alex or Marty when they're needed.
Game-Breaking Bug: Right after the crash-landing and before you enter the Serengeti proper in Escape 2 Africa game, Alex gets to fight the scorpions on the way. For some reason, one ends up immortal and cannot be defeated by any means.
Good Bad Bugs: In the "King of NYC" level, Alex and Marty can both go out of bounds - the former by exploiting the pigeon enemies to clip through a ledge and the latter by jumping at a specific spot between his treadmill and the wall - and explore outside the playable area.
Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer: Some people mainly play the first game for the golf and shuffleboarding mini-games, which are admittedly quite addicting. The developers seem to had caught onto this because the second game features roughly 10 minigames. Most of them are already introduced during the story mode, but others like the chess game are exclusively on the "arcade" menu.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: In the Escape 2 Africa movie, the main characters only destroyed the dam that the tourists built. In the game however, the first mission of the final level "Dam Busters" involves destroying the tourists' village. Did we forget to mention that these tourists got stranded, and thanks to you they no longer have a roof over their heads?
