Film Review: 39-Minute IMAX Doc ‘Island of Lemurs: Madagascar’ With Morgan Freeman Feels Incomplete

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CHICAGO – It’s challenging to enjoy this film purely for what it is rather than fault it for what it could have been. “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar,” which opened exclusively in IMAX 3D and 2D on April 4, 2014 and is narrated by Morgan Freeman, is only 39 minutes. The film too simply grazes the surface of a complicated problem.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

It feels like an elementary-school field trip rather than a film ready for nationwide IMAX distribution. It’s tough to tell if that’s because it was so expensive to film with IMAX cameras or because that’s as much of a story as is warranted by this adorable arboreal primate who is getting marketed as “nature’s greatest explorer”.

Read Adam Fendelman’s full review of “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar”.

Either way, it’s an incomplete project that only starts to touch the surface of elements it needed to be a full body of work. It’s just enough for the kiddies to enjoy a few moments of cuteness and education, and for adults, we’ll learn a thing or three, too. For example, lemurs feature a pointed snout and typically a long tail and they are found only in Madagascar.

But in a day and age when we have comprehensive nature projects like the TV series “Planet Earth” and the 2012 Disneynature film “Chimpanzee,” “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar” feels like it was rushed and it ran out of money.

It should have spent more time – even if that meant not being entirely in IMAX or shooting with IMAX cameras at all – to develop a full story, a human character and most important a central lemur or two by name.

Continue for Adam’s full “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar” review.

Ring-tailed lemurs spend more time on the ground than any other lemur.
Photo credit: Drew Fellman, Warner Bros. Entertainment

Continue for Adam’s full “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar” review.