Hold that thought. "The Wild" and another recent animated film. "Madagascar," share the same premise, which is that animals escape from a zoo and find themselves back in the jungle again -- Madagascar in the first film, continental Africa in this one.
The premise this time is that little Ryan (voice by Greg Cipes), the lion cub, has wandered off and gotten into a shipping container that is being taken to Africa. His horrified father Samson (Kiefer Sutherland) races off to save him and ends up chasing Ryan's ship all the way to Africa on a tugboat that gets very good mileage. Along for the ride are such zoo friends as Benny the Squirrel (James Belushi), Bridget the Giraffe (Janeane Garofalo), Nigel the Koala (Eddie Izzard) and Larry the Anaconda (Richard Kind).
Benny is in love with Bridget, not realizing he is a squirrel and she is not, which reminds me of the Mammoth in "Ice Age: The Meltdown," who thinks she is a possum. The cast continues to grow. On the journey through New York, they encounter a couple of alligators in the sewer system, and in Africa, they meet other characters, including the undercover chameleons Cloak and Camo (Bob Joles and Chris Edgerly), a vulture (Greg Berg) who I think lacks a name, and then, the earth thundering, the dreaded Kazar (William Shatner), who is king of the wildebeests but can be king of the jungle only if he defeats a lion. That would be Samson, who has a secret in his past he hopes Kazar doesn't discover.
Now, then. Although Samson gets regular T-bones at the zoo, he would no doubt cheerfully eat many of these other animals. But what are we to make of a volcano scene with lots of flowing lava that helps set up a scenario in which it appears that Kazar plans to cook Samson? Is Kazar not a vegetarian, or did I miss something?
The movie has a lot more action than "Ice Age: The Meltdown," which was essentially one long trek. There are savage beasts (wilde and other), exploding volcanoes, rivers of lava, and so on -- some of it maybe too intense for the youngest kids. This is the third animated feature in a row (after "Curious George" and "Ice Age: The Meltdown") which aims at children and has no serious ambition to be all things to all people, i.e., their parents. But for kids, it's OK.
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