THAT Dr Doolittle was a fraud. If animated adventures are to be believed, worker ants speak the same nasal New Yorkisms of Woody Allen (Antz), donkeys speak rapid-fire jive like Eddie Murphy (Shrek) and, according to Dreamworks' latest adventure Madagascar, a whole zoo-load of animals talk like wise-cracking New Yorkers.

Hardly difficult to understand.

Though these films are populated with animals, it seems that filmmakers can only make sense of them if they display human traits.

So giraffe Melman (voiced by Friends star David Schwimmer in full nervous, perma-swallowing mode) isn't really concerned about eating leaves but is a hypochondriac who is never happier than when buzzing on prescription drugs.

However, this film seems quite smartly aware of the con.

It focuses on a group of animals at a New York zoo that have become so urbanised they can't sleep without traffic noise and are voiced by New Yorkers such as Chris Rock and Ben Stiller.

Then they have them escape to the titular African island only to feel the calling of their natural instincts and replace the wisecracking with roars.

However, they are savvy enough to realise while animals in the wild doing their thing may be the way things are it's considerably less entertaining than having them dancing and singing along to dancehall hit I Want To Move It.

So for the most part that's what we get.

Zebra Marty (voiced by Rock) tries to convince his friends, lion Alex (voiced by Stiller), hippo Gloria (voiced by Jada Pinkett-Smith) and Melman that they are missing their true calling holed up in the city, despite its perks.

Rather more by mistake than design the friends are transferred to another zoo by ship, along with a group of intrepid penguins who seem to spend their lives plotting ever more daring, and unsuccessful, escape attempts.

An on-board squabble throws them overboard and they are washed up on a wild island populated with a colony of barmy lemurs (led by their none-more-barmy king, voiced hilariously by Ali G creator Sacha Baron Cohen).

The story is slight but it barely matters because the script is full of hilarious lines.

Most fun of all are a couple of urbane monkeys who manage to combine debates on literature with poo-flinging.

It may lack the genre invention and subversion of Shrek but it is laugh-out-loud funny throughout.

- Mark Edwards