Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Cert PG, 93 mins - review

 
p43 Madagascar © 2011 DreamWorks Animation LLC. All Rights Reserved.
13 December 2012

You’ll seldom see a more manic piece of animation than this “threequel” to the popular franchise. It’s never still for a moment as the animal heroes that kids love so much leave Africa to go home to New York via Europe, where a French animal control inspector, looking very like a caricature of Helena Bonham Carter (but voiced by Frances McDormand), forces them to hide in a circus.

It’s no use expecting a full-blown finale. Nothing could be more swingeing than what has gone before as Alex, Marty, Melman and Gloria, plus Sacha Baron Cohen’s King Julian XIII, a demented lemur, manoeuvre themselves past the dreaded French.

Fortunately the animation is so good that a fine time is likely to be had by all. The bombardment is constant as the film progresses, with its three directors and voicing cast (Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer, Jade Pinkett Smith and Chris Rock) providing a constant stream of jokes, visual tropes and hairy situations that simply never stop.

The result is by far the best of the series technically and probably otherwise. The circus scenes, in particular, are state of the art as our heroes penetrate a company that has clearly seen better days, though the madcap car chase through Monte Carlo, with penguins as drivers, is hard to beat.

Few will mind the fact that the plot doesn’t exactly tie itself up with logic. Or that, in this insane world, nothing is quite what it seems. This is animation that never just goes through the motions but glories in its feats and so, almost certainly, will you.

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