LOS ANGELES – In the teeming banquet of humanity, Jada Pinkett Smith is the size of an hors d’oeuvre. Which has not, in defiance of most conventional thinking, made her happy.

“I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing,” said the 5-foot-tall actress, “but I’ve always wanted more body. So I got to play a hippo.”

Correction: She got to play a hippo again. Pinkett Smith, Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer, Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen all reconverge in “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa,” the sequel (opening Friday) to a movie that has grossed more than half a billion (BILLION!) theatrical dollars worldwide.

“I was like, ‘Really?!”‘ Pinkett Smith said.

But it had always been the plan to maneuver “Madagascar” into franchise-hood.

“The idea was always to support more than one movie,” Stiller said. “That’s how Jeffrey (Katzenberg, DreamWorks co-president) talked about it. And we’ll do another, if there are enough fresh ideas.

“But I think the second one was much more enjoyable because we learned so much on the first one about who the characters are.”

Those characters, all onetime inhabitants of the Central Park Zoo, include Stiller’s Alex, the so-called “King of New York” and the big-cat version of “High School Musical’s” Lucas Grabeel.

“Yeah, it’s about Alex being accepted,” Stiller said of the story, “and not being the most macho lion. And being in show business. You could certainly take it to another level, though I think that, again, there’s a good layer of subtext in the movie: ‘This could be that,’ or ‘That could be this.’ But there is certainly a lesson about father and son coming together. And Alex being accepted for who he is.”

In New York, Alex enjoys zoological stardom, but in Africa he has to prove himself according to the ways of his tribe – and his father, Zuba (the late Bernie Mac). The issues of identity and adjustment affect all the characters, including Gloria, the saucy hippo (PinkettSmith); Melman, the neurotic giraffe (Schwimmer), and Marty, the wisecracking zebra (Rock).

In the first film, the group left the confines of the animal preserve known as Manhattan, ending up on the island of Madagascar (where they met Julien the Lemur King, voiced like a Mumbai-based telemarketer by Sacha Baron Cohen). In the new film – and, again, following the lead of the penguins – the Central Park posse patches together a plane and heads for New York, crash-landing instead on the African savannah.

Children’s literature (including movies) is often about the misplaced misfit or outsider finding his or her true home, and true family. The “Harry Potter” series is a prime, contemporary example (Harry is abused by his relatives, and embraced at Hogwarts). But the grass-is-greener (and “I must have been adopted”) phenomena occur throughout fiction, sometimes happily (“Oliver Twist”) and sometimes in ways that turn the whole idea upside down (“Alice Through the Looking Glass,” “Treasure Island”).

“Madagascar 2” has classic kid lit in its DNA. Alex’s origin story – he was poached in infancy, and indirectly made his way to the Central Park Zoo – is all about an archetypal homecoming, something always irresistible to children. Not that anyone ever outgrows it.

“I have a lot of different ‘homes,”” said Pinkett Smith, gesturing toward herself. “My ancestry is very diverse. But Africa is one of those places where I have a real sense of purpose and connection.”

The actress had been to Tanzania recently with husband Will Smith, working on behalf of the philanthropic organization Malaria No More (malaria nomore.org), distributing mosquito netting in the bush. The trip was unconnected to the movie, except in that sense of homecoming: Just as the animals in the film are overjoyed to find lions and zebras and hippos of their own kind, humans respond likewise.

“Even as adults,” she said, “we’re looking for those like-minded groups – we’re looking for our herd. So I could relate when Gloria goes and sees the group of hippos and Marty sees the zebras, Melman the giraffes and Alex with the pack of lions. But the great thing that unfolds in the movie is the idea that home is wherever your love is.

“It may not be in the house you grew up in, or even the nation you grew up in. But as long as you can identify with it, it’s yours.”

“Yours” for Pinkett Smith includes one member of the cast – daughter Willow, who voices the baby Gloria. Likewise, Stiller’s son, Quinn, voices the baby Alex. Like most celebrities who do cartoon voices, being in something their children can relate to is prime motivation (that, and the easy money). Mostly, though, “Madagascar 2” is about a group of misfits who find that home. At the risk of sounding cynical, it’s not a bad strategy for a movie.

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