Last week (before Hurricane Sandy took away my electricity), I watched the third entry in the animated Madagascar series. For those unfamiliar with the movies, they feature four main animals - Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett-Smith) who escape from the Central Park Zoo and wind up in their ancestral home of Africa. Of course, having been born and raised in a zoo, they are thoroughly unequipped to deal with their natural habitat, which makes for much of the comedy in the first two movies.
Unfortunately, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted features the animals traveling to Europe and joining a circus to make their way back across the Atlantic to New York City. The animation is spot-on and the locales of Monte Carlo, Rome, and London look lovely, but the story is fairly lacking. Our four leads have to come up with their own circus acts as well as encourage the other circus animals who have lost their zest for performing. Once the acts are organized, the audience is subjected to a colorful, bewildering, acid trip of a circus act set to Katy Perry's "Firework," which should really feature a warning for anyone prone to photoepileptic seizures.
The movie is big on spectacle, small on story, and signals that it's time to call it quits on this franchise. However, as far as I can remember, it was #1 at the box office this summer, so undoubtedly further sequels will be in the works. Like always, the voice acting is great, and Chris Rock's circus jingle is an earworm that I keep humming at odd intervals. I just hope that the story lines keep up with the voice talent and gorgeous animation. After all the movies are titled, "Madagascar" so you can't really move the action to other continents. And every studio executive knows that there's no need to re-invent the wheel if you have a winning formula. Stick to the African antics and you have a hit on your hands.
Unfortunately, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted features the animals traveling to Europe and joining a circus to make their way back across the Atlantic to New York City. The animation is spot-on and the locales of Monte Carlo, Rome, and London look lovely, but the story is fairly lacking. Our four leads have to come up with their own circus acts as well as encourage the other circus animals who have lost their zest for performing. Once the acts are organized, the audience is subjected to a colorful, bewildering, acid trip of a circus act set to Katy Perry's "Firework," which should really feature a warning for anyone prone to photoepileptic seizures.
The movie is big on spectacle, small on story, and signals that it's time to call it quits on this franchise. However, as far as I can remember, it was #1 at the box office this summer, so undoubtedly further sequels will be in the works. Like always, the voice acting is great, and Chris Rock's circus jingle is an earworm that I keep humming at odd intervals. I just hope that the story lines keep up with the voice talent and gorgeous animation. After all the movies are titled, "Madagascar" so you can't really move the action to other continents. And every studio executive knows that there's no need to re-invent the wheel if you have a winning formula. Stick to the African antics and you have a hit on your hands.
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