Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012)

Madagascar 3

★★☆☆☆

Directed by: Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath and Conrad Vernon

Written by: Eric Darnell and Noah Baumbach

Sometimes you go to a movie just for the company, just to engage in leisure with someone you like or love or enjoy company. I think this is often the case with kids: parents endure children’s entertainment for the sake of seeing the delight in their offspring. I like taking my daughter to the movies because it helps confer the love of the theater experience to her, to watch as she delights in the spectacle of the darkened room, the larger-than-life screen and sound, the dedication to sustained activity. Plus, when it’s done right, kid-friendly movies can be enjoyable for adults, too. I liked Tangled and Despicable Me and I often enjoy Pixar movies; everyone wins.

Of course, sometimes you have to endure stuff like Madagascar 3. The series, which I’ve never really thought had much to offer (I’ve seen snippets of the original and labored through the second), returns to wear out its continually thinning welcome with uninspired art design and a curiously talky script that has the lion, the zebra, the giraffe and the hippo (who have names, but I can’t ever seem to keep them in my head, nor does it appear to matter) loose in Europe after yet another credibility-straining mishap, trying to duck a relentless French animal control officer by hiding out in a traveling circus.

The jokes are abundant but few are really funny and after awhile the “comedy” dissolves into a one-note repetition of the trailer-highlight “Circus Afro” song. Eventually the refrain is remixed with the “You Got To Move It” power dance track that so annoyingly worms its way into ears from the first two flicks, resulting a sort of unholy brain-sticking über-irritant that cannot be scrubbed clean even with hours of quality redirection in the form of Arcade Fire or Blind Pilot. Take it from someone with experience.

I think the principal issue with Madagascar 3 is that it tries to find the magic formula that Pixar has developed for blending memorable characters with touching, affirming plots and avoiding to much dip into traditional, slapstick cartoon formula. The problem is that Madagascar 3 is really only noteworthy when it trades on its Saturday Morning roots because the characters aren’t memorable and the script isn’t that good. Similar to the well-trad Ice Age franchise (notably also executed by Dreamworks Animation), the funniest parts are those that channel Friz Freling or Chuck Jones, not Brad Bird and John Lasseter.

Madagascar 3 isn’t so bad that I felt I needed to walk out of the theater, and my daughter said she enjoyed it so it’s hard to feel like it was a waste of time. Somewhere, though, in the back of my mind, is the list of movies coming out this year that I want to see and I note how ridiculously long it is and I think that no matter how many of them I see, I’ll still miss a few and I’ll have to review the list of theater experiences I had in 2012 and note that one or more of those is not present, while Madagascar 3 is.

from No Thief Like a Bad MovieJune 18, 2012 at 02:03PM