film | Bungle in the jungle

The legal department over at Disney's computer animation studios probably wants you to know that THE WILD was in production before DreamWorks' strangely identical Madagascar, a family flick that, unfortunately for the Magic Kingdom, beat The Wild to theaters by almost a year. Adding insult to injury, the extra time Disney had didn't appear to help. A dutiful reviewer should now point out that Madagascar is technically the superior film, but between these two titles, it's more a question of which endeavor is slightly less unremarkable while being equally inoffensive.

In both movies, a manic menagerie from a New York City zoo — including a neurotic giraffe and a lion with a crowd-pleasing roar — escape their metropolitan captivity, stumble onto a freighter, wind up shipwrecked in the african jungle, and run across a bullied troop of indigenous creatures — that'd be wildebeests in The Wild, lemurs (infinitely more adorable than wildebeests) in Madagascar — prone to outlandish musical numbers. The Wild's one big plot dissimilarity comes when leading lion Samson (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland) loses his only cub (Greg Cipes) in the labyrinthine bush and must race to rescue him, which, come to think of it, isn't all that original either. In fact, it's the narrative framework of Disney's own Finding Nemo, beached on dry land and gasping for fresh air.

For such a redundant and listless story, the film is remarkably busy and stuffed with wisecracking animal sidekicks: Assisting Samson on his quest are Benny the Squirrel (James Belushi), Bridget the Giraffe (Janeane Garofalo [!]), Nigel the Koala bear (Eddie Izzard [!!]), and Larry the Cable Guy Anaconda (Richard Kind). They're certainly cute and cuddly and lovable — and terrifically detailed, where their Madagascar counterparts were colorful but cartoony — but they're better suited to a collection of beanie babies than a batch of movie characters. There's an extremely forced zaniness to most of their interplay, and too many of the comedy bits and throwaway lines rely on clunky madcap sound effects to underscore their frivolity. By the time the end credits attribute the direction to one Steve "Spaz" Williams, you might not wonder how he got the nickname. C