By Emma Sargeant
The Uptown Cinema on Queen Anne in Seattle was packed with children and adults waiting the special early screening of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. Children dragged their parents from the wine bar and the aroma of deliciously toxic Dick’s hamburgers filled the air.
Directed by Tom McGrath, a native of Edmonds, Wash., Madagascar surprises with its hints of political wit and capitalism comedy. The sequel opens with a flashback to the childhood of the eccentric metro-sexual lion, Alex, voiced by Ben Stiller, who in lives Africa with his father. He finds it difficult to conform to the standards of the normal ways of a carnivore. He’s then unsuccessfully kidnapped by poachers and finds himself floating his way to New York City to land a gig as a dancing king at Central Park Zoo. With the hopes and dreams of fun and excitement, the lion and his zoo friends venture out of the “concrete jungle” to party in Madagascar. 
Marooned on Madagascar, the animals crave to return to what they know as success by building a plane to fly back to their adopted home of New York. But of course, the animals find it difficult to construct an airplane (although they manage to filter out potentially hazardous passengers who posses scissors and hand cream in their luggage), so they crash, landing on the terrain of their beloved Africa.
Alex the lion is reunited with his alpha lion father who is voiced by the late