Madagascar meets Shawshank Redemption

Madagascar (Ben Stiller/Alex the Lion, Chris Rock/Marty the Zebra, David Schwimmer/Melman the Giraffe, and Jada Pinket-Smith/Gloria the Hippopotamus)
Shawshank Redemption (Tim Robbins/Andi Dufresne, Morgan Freeman/Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding)


One is a fresh and funny Box Office animation, and the latter is a gloomy and serious Academy Award winning film.

So far different, yet both touch me in so many levels, in many different ways that I could possibly imagine.

The word “institutionalized” comes to mind.

Having lived in captivity for 10 years, growing up knowing no other but the comfortable life of New York Zoo, Marty got bored. He was tired of all the routine, and soon swayed by the smooth talk of the Penguins who wanted nothing but to escape from the zoo.
He ran. And his best friends went on a rescue mission to bring him but instead, these “New York Giants” were sent to a remote part of Madagascar, to live in the wilderness, where they met an entire community of Lemurs, with King Julien as their host.
Alex, almost failed to adapt. Being well-fed and groomed each and every day of his life in New York got him weak by the stomach, and he soon developed his natural instinct. To prey.
And hadn’t it been for Marty’s belief in him, Alex wouldn’t have made it. He would’ve lost his old self, the non dangerous, most popular show in town.

Red spent 40 years in prison, a hard lesson to learn for a crime he committed. The bars introduced him to Andy, a newcomer who was falsely accused of murdering his wife and her lover. Andy fought the hard life of the prison where you are not to make the wrong acquaintance if you want to keep your life, or at least, your dignity. The prison could not taint Andy’s hope of freedom and after less than 20 years he finally broke free.
Red got his parole after he giving up hope, and rejoined his best friend in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.
But not every men standing inside those high and thick walls could survive out there. Brooks Hatlen, who spent 50 years as an inmate, broke down when he finally got his parole. He simply could not handle the pressure of living in the real world. In the wild.

The New York City zoo may imprison the animals.
As it has locked down human beings as well, in Shawshank Prison.

Institutionalized.
That’s what happened to these animals, and humans.
The so called “institutions” serves a better purpose of slowly eating a man’s hope, slowly turning wild animals into “pansies”, and in the end, slowly turning these animals and human beings against their own nature: to live free, to live in the wild.


Life, unlike the Zoo and the Prison, it offers freedom.
But sometimes, we face biting reality that in so many ways, Life is a lot like those bars.

Sometimes, we may feel imprisoned, sitting in the same cubicle for tens of years, facing the same routine, the same problems to solve, entertaining the same sets of people, and having to cope with all the boredom that may come in the package of being born, of being delivered into this world.

Some made their peace– and die old behind the bars or inside the showcase, some simply cannot handle it – and choose to meet their makers, some strong enough to break free – and succeed in their own quest of adventure, their own battle against their ego.

Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria, the New York Giants, sailed back to New York, where they really belong. Red joined Andy in the Pacific, where they would face their whole life ahead of them, as free men.


We are granted a privilege of not living as animals inside the zoo, of having a full set of brain, a healthy one that deprived us from committing a crime to get us locked in. Yet sometimes, we’re forgetting that “time does fly”, even on the outside. Even as free human beings, we’re still trapped in “time prison”.
We’ll never go back.

Sometimes we make mistakes.
Sometimes we choose to ignore our yielding conscience, while it’s been screaming the whole time.
Sometimes we’re stuck and we give up. Forgetting that we do deserve to have our dreams.
Sometimes we forget that deep down inside our hearts, there’s a place called “hope” that no one can touch.


I gave up hope, a long time ago.
But once again, I learned from these characters.
Life, like the Time, IS precious.
We’ll never get back what we’ve lost.

The time is NOW.
Hopes will not fail us.
Only if we try hard enough.