Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private join forces with undercover organisation The North Wind to stop the villainous Dr. Octavius Brine from destroying the world as we know it.

I wasn’t expecting too much from this spin-off of the wildly successful Madagascar series.

Rather than a lazy effort tying in the parent film series, Penguins sets the scene of the four creatures origin and briefly touches on their time with Madagascar before throwing them into a crime and spy caper that borrows from every great title in the genre from Get Smart to James Bond. With nods to Megamind and The Incredibles this has dazzling action and non stop laughs.

My wife took out daughter to see this and Ruby scored it a 5. Mum was a little less enthusiastic scoring a 3.

I met them in the middle as I thought this was one of the better kids animated films of the last 12 months.

Definite star of the film is John Malkovich as “Dave” the octopus… Wickedly funny.

Overall it’s very, very funny and fantastic family fun.

4 Stars.