If you turned last year's animated hit "Madagascar" into a family outing, store it in your deep memory and pack the kids off to "The Wild." It has a similar story, is done in the same computer-generated style and is far more entertaining.

Hoping to capture the same lightning that brought fortune with "Finding Nemo," the Disney creative trust came up with this father-son adventure in which a young lion named Ryan (voiced by Greg Cipes) is accidentally shipped from the New York Zoo to Africa and has to be rescued by his father Samson (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland).

After escaping from the zoo, Samson and his pals - the squirrely squirrel Benny (James Belushi), the lithesome giraffe Bridget (Janeane Garofalo), the dorky python Larry (Richard Kind) and the self-conscious koala Nigel (Eddie Izzard) - slip through the streets and sewers of Manhattan and commandeer a tugboat for a cruise to the Dark Continent.

There, far out of their element, they - and Ryan - are captured by a herd of cat-hating wildebeests whose tyrannical leader Kazar (William Shatner) has long promised them a ritual dinner of lion meat, cooked over a steaming lava pool.

Here, revenge is best served hot.

Our heroes' hopes hang on a marvelous coincidence. Years before, a toy koala bear from their same New York Zoo fell from a passing plane and frightened away a lion about to lunch on a wildebeest.

When the critters see Nigel, they assume he is a living god. The problem is that Nigel likes being a god.

"The Wild" gets off to a very tame start at the zoo, with some awkward introductions to the main characters and a silly, irrelevant game of ice curling where live turtles serve as sliding stones.

But when Samson and the menagerie arrive in Africa, the story blossoms into animated life - in full detail, action, color and humor. "The Wild" isn't stuffed with pop references for bored parents, as "Madagascar" was, but its juvenile spirit is truly infectious.

The voice performances are terrific, particularly those of Belushi and Garofalo, as the amorous squirrel and the giraffe he would like to have as his wife.

Imagination, as Benny knows, is half the battle.