‘Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ (2012) review; 100 Movies in 90 Days part II

#20 of 100 on my 100 Movies I’ve Never Seen Before Challenge (part II)

Okay, so on this one, I had very little “Madagascar” experience going in. I had seen bits and pieces of the first movie and didn’t see the second. My kids really never seemed to care…that is until I took them to see “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” in 3D. Normally I’m a sucker– at least I used to be– for movies about talking animals but anymore, between “Shrek”, “Madagascar”, “Ice Age”…and what was the one with Jack Bauer as the lion?

“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted movie picks up where part two left off, with the Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) stuck in Africa. They still want to get back to the zoo they escaped from in the first one. The film moves pretty fast but it’s all in stupid fun. Kids will dig it because it’s a bunch of dumb talking cartoon animals doing a bunch of dumb and ridiculous things. Does it make sense? That’s not really the issue.

The whole point is to get back to New York and Alex and his friends find a chance to do just that by joining a traveling European circus, which has a chance to get picked up by an American promoter, if they can regain the quality of show they used to churn out night after night. The circus animals are led by a tiger, Vitaly, voiced by Bryan Cranston. Once they get going in the circus stuff, the 3D really kicks in and it gets to be a little more amusing. Compared to say, Pixar movies, the humor is aimed strictly towards the kids with very little that adults may appreciate other than knowing their children are having fun.

Even though there is nothing special at play here it does maintain a certain charm, which should be appreciated after the last one was a disappointment (at least according to my kids) and the fact you’ve got a movie with Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer and Jada Smith– who would ever want to see that cast live action?

“Madagascar 3” is a fun movie for the whole family and worth seeing on the big screen and in 3D if you want to splurge. Compared to some other third acts of animated trilogies, “Shrek 3”, for example– it does a nice job of wrapping the story up, assuming DreamWorks can let this go here. They should…SHOULD being the operative word.