That will.i.am received any credit for the score is a tragedy, because the main songs performed by him on the soundtrack seem more informed by Zimmer's melodies than the other way around. The songs in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa regurgitate "I Like to Move It" for will.i.am and feature an adaptation of Zimmer's escape theme as the songs "The Traveling Song" and "Alex on the Spot." Zimmer's friendship theme, meanwhile, remains the basis of the song "Best Friends." The fresher material from will.i.am in "Big and Chunky" and "She Loves Me" is regrettably obnoxious. A handful of parody placements litter the film and soundtrack on top of these will.i.am performances, and they keep the experience extremely disjointed. Aside from often pilfering Zimmer's themes, these songs are of zero interest to film score collectors. For these listeners, the credit afforded to will.i.am needed to be shifted to Zimmer's diligent ghostwriters that actually wrote the majority of the score. Some of the names involved carry over in the same roles from Madagascar, James Dooley writing the espionage-inspired action material that again exposes its roots in Michael Giacchino's The Incredibles and Heitor Pereira handling the easy-going and chipper, island-suave personality. While Pereira's impact on these scores is fairly minimal, Dooley's snazzier action music does recur frequently, using the same bassline phrases throughout score for consistency. These contributions are somewhat annoying, however, in that they clearly deviate from the style of the remainder of the score. For that mass of work, Zimmer turns to Lorne Balfe for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and it is Balfe who seems largely responsible for the increasingly robust dramatic appeal of this and the subsequent sequel score. The highlights of this work are when Balfe (and, for a couple of cues, Geoff Zanelli) teams with Zimmer or adapts his melodies, though you don't hear the fruits of this work on the commercial album, which is a disgrace that concentrates, naturally, on the will.i.am and parody tracks. Only about sixteen minutes of true score material is contained on that album, ignoring many of the best instrumental sequences in the film.

The cues in the score for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa are often extremely short due to the genre's normal habits, but an enjoyable half hour of material (if not more) could easily be collected from the Zimmer's team here, some of whom have taken the opportunity through the years to release cues of their own making from this score on their individual websites. The existing, main escape theme by Zimmer really flourishes in this sequel, not only adapted by will.i.am in the songs but especially when applied to the score by Zimmer, Balfe, and Zanelli. The theme really seems to concentrate on Alex the lion in the story, following his childhood and later familial relations in the plot. The idea also continues to follow the original Zoosters as they endeavor to triumph together again over man and nature. This score exposes it as a far more malleable and engaging theme, its underlying rhythms still chugging away on hyperactive strings (this motif alone is a calling card of the franchise) but the melody on top is really developed well in this work. It always helps to have a few Richard Harvey woodwind performances in the mix, the best moments of this score emulating the tenderness of The Lion King using those instruments. On the commercial album's presentation, this material opens the product with the flashback sequence in "Once Upon a Time in Africa" (the album version of this cue is far superior to the film's mix, which forces an incongruous brass stinger at the outset) and persists in the pleasing, likely concert-targeted and slightly dance-inspired "Rescue Me" and the sensitive moment of motherly care in "Foofie." (The character's name in the movie is Florrie, so who knows what Zimmer was thinking here.) A substantial number of cues attributed at least in part to Balfe apply this theme surprisingly well in unreleased material, a great performance of the escape theme revealed on brass in "He's Come Home/Julien Arrives," a soft reprise of the exotic woodwinds featured throughout "Banishment," and a hopeful, pretty version of this tact persisting in "Makunga Has Spoken." A massive performance of the main theme for full ensemble opens "Ride the Wave," a moment arranged by Zanelli. The applications of this theme are spaced in a way to provide a solid narrative to the score even with the short cue times and multiple composers involved.

Meanwhile, the other theme returning from Madagascar in the score is Zimmer's effortlessly happy friendship identity, which still sounds like a suspicious holdover from "Sesame Street" and is a little obnoxious in that regard. On the album, it only figures at the end of "Volcano" and in the middle of "Monochromatic Friends," which pushes a snippet of the score's associated romance music in between Dooley silliness. Unreleased is the mass of adaptations of this theme for conversational scenes of compassion. From Balfe are the nicely somber friendship theme performances on solo horn and strings in "One in a Million/Dying Holes," a shift of this approach to evocative woodwinds in "Melman Professes," and a celebratory snippet in "Crossing the Line." Zimmer himself is credited with nice bursts of the friendship theme in "Little Squirt" and "Big Squirt." The score for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa also features a new theme by Zimmer, a stomping, ominous identity for the lions and their culture of dominance. Heard only in "Once Upon a Time in Africa" on the album, this driving theme of adversity recurs in the score during "He's Come Home," an alternate version of "Party," "Warpaint," "Banishment," and "Life Isn't Fair," spanning some different emotional realms in the latter cues. The score's best action music is not available on the commercial album, led by "Found the Clog" and "Rotisserie" by Balfe and the brief "Basset Hound" by Zanelli. As mentioned before, these cues desperately needed combined into suites on the commercial album, which, at less than 50 minutes, could have easily offered this music for a satisfactory overall listening experience. As it stands, the album is really only useful for the trio of main escape theme performances in "Once Upon a Time in Africa," "Rescue Me," and "Foofie." The remainder of the score has been bootlegged endlessly through the years in varying sound quality; listeners need to remember that the album version of "Once Upon a Time in Africa" is superior, however, and, for most casual Zimmer collectors, this one track will be more than enough representation from the score. Balfe's return yields some noteworthy highlights in the subsequent score in the franchise, though Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa remains the best entry for the infectiously cute main escape theme. In an ideal world, the best score material from all three films would be combined into one rollicking album.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download