It's Christmas Eve. Private is concerned about Ted the Polar Bear being sad. He disobeys orders and goes out to get a gift for him. Skipper leads the squad to find him. A mean rich old lady mistakes Private for a toy and buys him for her dog Mr. Chew. Mr. Chew turns out to be a vicious dog and the squad arrives just in time.The Penguins have always been my favorite characters of the Madagascar franchise. This short has a good density of jokes. The gang is fun. There is good hijinx. The main leads of Madagascar aren't really in this and that is perfectly fine. It's nice that Private is looking out for others and the gang looks out for each other.

This is an 11-minute short film from 10 years ago and was released directly after the first Madagascar movie. The main characters from the film have short cameos at the beginning and end of this one here, but it's really all about the penguins this time, quite a while before they got their own television series and, more recently, their own theatrical movie.The penguins are busy with Christmas preparations, but one of them feels sorry for the polar bear being alone during the holidays and heads off to town to buy him a little present. Unfortunately, during this adventure, he gets caught by the Old Lady (another cameo) and is in danger of becoming a present himself. Luckily, his pals are already on their way to rescue him and fight an evil poodle while they are at it.The film's director is Gary Trousdale, who directed very famous animated movies such as "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" long before this was made. Michael Lachance, the writer, worked also on "King Fu Panda", "Shrek 2" and of course "Madagascar". These 11 minutes are mostly for children. You could see that they did not want to go too serious for example in the one scene when we see fish wrapped as Christmas presents and they were still alive and moving. Death should not have a place in light films like this one. All in all, worth a watch I would say, especially if you like the feature films. I always found the penguins funny and it's nice to see them get some love here. Oh and feel free to sing along at the end. Recommended.

I first saw "A Christmas Caper" in Nov. 2005, when it was a "curtain-opener" for the Wallace & Gromit feature film. Blessings, it arrived a month later on DVD as a supplement to the "Madagascar" video. I've seen it about a half-dozen times with my young son, and it's still a hoot. The premise is that a quartet of penguins act like an Army squadron, headed by their all-knowing (at least HE thinks so) "Skipper," as they rescue "one of their own" when he ventures out of the zoo into the real world to get a Christmas present for a forlorn member of his zoo. The whole cartoon plays as though Wile E. Coyote got every one of his schemes absolutely right for once. If you don't watch to watch "Madagascar" for some reason, play "A Christmas Caper" as a prelude to watching "March of the Penguins" and make it an all-penguins viewing night. "Caper" is a hoot.

That is for some reason tagged onto the reels for the very halloween-y Wallace and Gromitt's Curse of the Wear Rabbit. It would have made more sense for this film to be tagged onto something in December but hey-ho.I've not actually seen Madagascar, so I'm not immediately familiar with these characters. But I have to say that the penguins were very funny. The story has one of them leave Central Park Zoo to look for the perfect Xmas present, only to end up an Xmas present himself. The other penguins soon follow him to a posh apartment building where a blind old lady plans to give him to her evil pet poodle.Very funny antics and hijinks follow. I wouldn't be surprised if this cartoon were nominated for an Oscar come February.