DreamWorks Review: Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted

DreamWorks Animation’s 24th feature film

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My Opinion right after watching movie

My opinion right after watching the movie is that it is not the best out of the franchise; Escape 2 Africa is. The plot is extremely unfocused and when the story does start, it only gives us a few good moments. The characters do not develop, and it is just distraction after distraction. It has no focus, but it is not as irritating and heartless as Madagascar.

Production

I found practically NOTHING about the production of the film. The only fact I found was that the effects, some animation, and the 3D was made in India.

Story

So Alex (Ben Stiller), Marty (Chris Rock), Melman (David Schwimmer), and Gloria (Jada Pickett Smith) are still stuck in Africa, Alex has a dream of them all getting old in Africa on his birthday, which freaks him out. They make him a sand statue of the zoo in New York, and they miss it. They realize that the penguins were taking too long to come for them, so they went to Monte Carlo themselves, by…..

Perfect example of lazy writing. So the writers get them to Monte Carlo by practically ignoring it. They could have put themselves into boxes and someone picked them up, ANYTHING. This is a really bad start, and they should have at least given them a sensible reason to get there. Not a good start.

So they come up with a plan to get the penguins from the casino (how do they know that?) and to get to New York but when they are doing that, they fail miserably and catch the attention of animal control Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand) who wants a lion’s head to add to her collection.

If it was not for this hysterical but useless villain, this movie would have been a lot more miserable to me. Literally, she adds NOTHING to the main story, and it is just ANOTHER character that is comic relief.

So after a long 3 minute chase on the streets, the Monkeys get a plane and the main 4 animals, penguins, Julian and Maurice (I still don’t know WHY THEY ARE IN THE MOVIE; another useless bunch of characters just for comic relief, ugh). Anyways, the plane crashes by a circus animal train, and Gia the jaguar (Jessica Chastain) lets them come with them only because they lied about being circus animals. So we are about 25 minutes in, and the main plot is not even present and set up properly, Great.

Brilliant.

So enough with the sarcasm, they are on the train and Stefano the sea lion (Martin Short) asks them about their act, and they say they do a bunch of cool stuff, making Stefano ask them to come to Rome with them because they have an audition to tour New York, which Alex accepts. Vitaly the tiger (Bryan Cragston) is pissed because they are stowaways, and the penguins reveal that they bought the circus, which they never explained why they did so.

So they are preparing to perform and the crew are having a good time. Alex bumps into Gia about not seeing them as authority figures and it is clear that he likes her. It is a nice moment.

So they perform, suck and that is that scene.

Chantel followed them to Rome (outside of her jurisdiction) and got arrested, and soon snuck out. She finds out via computer that Alex is the missing lion of the New York park. They are on the train, and Stefano explains to Alex how they were the best circus around, and how Vitaly’s fire hoop stunt burnt his skin, and made him lose his wife, explaining him being so uptight.

They train, Alex and Gia like one another, and they all get along. By the way, this point marks the hour mark in the movie.

Oh, their agent is at London, and they are ready to perform, except that Vitaly is not ready to perform because of his insecurities, and Alex gives him a pep talk about the circus stays together, and he finally performs which works cause Alex gave him hair conditioner instead of olive oil, so he won’t burn.  Then they perform their circus act to Katy Perry’s “Fireworks”.

While I ripped this film apart in the first half, the second half is actually very nice. This scene is though clearly made to show off 3D, it looks very cool and it is nice how certain relationships and friendships are shown just through them performing. This is another nice moment.

Gia is thrilled about the performance and talking to Alex about them performing together forever, he is indifferent to it because he wants to go back to the zoo and is about to tell her but Chantel crashes it and does the job for them. Then the liar revealed thing is sorted out, and the 4 end up on a small boat tied to the small boat going to America.

When they return to the zoo, it is a lot smaller to them because of their adventure, and it is not as they remembered it. They feel trapped and such, and there was a wall between all of them. It is not as amazing to them because of everything they went through. See what I mean about nice moments at the end.

The circus animals are sad without the main 4 so they rescue them from the zoo, Chantel is still trying to get her Alex head, but fails, and they decide to join the circus animals and to go on the circus because they are still performing, but still get to travel. Nice ending.

While I have definitely ripped the Madagascar franchise apart at times, including this movie, they were never awful; just lacking focus in the characters and the story, and this film definitely lacks focus but we care enough about the characters that the ending is really satisfying and they actually changed overall over the franchise about what their life was.

Characters

The main characters in this film do not develop AT ALL, other than the fact that they think the zoo is small when they come back. The other characters that are not completely useless are enjoyable, but not that deep.

Like I said above,he has not changed, but grows the love of Gia.

Marty is the least focused one out of the 4. He becomes friends and performance partners with Stefano, but otherwise, nothing.

He is the same. He loves Gloria and overcomes his fear of ropes I guess?

She is the same, but more nurturing and less stereotypical black woman.

Even though she is just there to be Alex’s love interest, Gia is optimistic, excitable, and likes thrill.

He is pretty deep for a supporting character. The accident with the fire caused him to lose everything including his wife and his faith, and turned him miserable and isolated. He is a great character.

Stefano is happy, fun-loving, and always thinking of the positive.

Chantel DuBoisis a great character. She is insane, irrational, controlling, and loves what she does so much that us as the audience enjoys her, but she serves NOTHING to the main
plot, and is just there for comic relief and to say they have a villain.

Animation

The animation is actually very nice. Since the film was made in 3D, we get a lot of shots of some characters zooming in the camera and it is a bit distracting. This is easily the most colourful film in the franchise and the effects are really cool.

Music

The music is the same old songs and scores for the most part, but they are changed up so they seem fresh.

Reception at Release

When the film was released on June 8th 2012, it opened at #1 and made a bigger opening that was predicted.  It retained that spot for the other week as well. Overall it made 216,391,482 in North America, and $530,529,792 in other countries, making a worldwide total of $746,921,274. It is the highest-grossing film in the series, 4th highest grossing DreamWorks Animation film, 8th highest grossing film of 2012, and the 2nd highest grossing animated film of 2012.

Critically, it did a bit better than it should have; I am just bluntly stating the obvious. People considered it the best out of the franchise (insert eye roll) because of its humor, animation, and charm. What about the story? characters? My point exactly.

As we all know about Brave politically cheating winning the majority of the awards over better films, this film was snubbed for the most part. It was nominated for 2 Kid’s Choices, 2 Teen Choices, 4 Annies, 2 Saturn Awards, and  a Critic’s Choice Award. The only award it won was the Kid’s Choice Argentina awards. As you can see, it was snubbed at the Academy Awards altogether.

Reception Today

Well, it’s rep today is that it is one of the worst animated films of 2012, and it is the best film out of the Madagascar franchise. Well, it did well enough to spawn a spinoff movie called The Penguins of Madagascar, which will be released on March 27, 2015.

Final Score

Story = 5/10

Characters = 6.5/10

Music = 7/10

Animation = 8/10

=27/40=  66% 

Next Time……

Review: December 17th, 2013

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