Beginning where the second one left off, our quartet of Central Park Zoo escapees are still awaiting the arrival of the never-returning penguins who have jettisoned off to Monte Carlo to impersonate the King of Versailles and strike it rich by cheating at craps. Fearing that his nightmares accurately prophecy that penguins’ dubiousness, Alex (Ben Stiller) convinces the rest of the group to forgo the wait and embark on a quick, “hop, skip, and a swim” to Monte Carlo to confront the penguins, chew them out, and then apologize for chewing them out.
Instead, the plot backfires, each of the animals is spotted and must flee the casino, becoming fugitives under the ominous gaze of Captain Dubois (Frances McDormand), whose penchant for taxidermy will not be sated until she has a lion’s head as the centerpiece of her wall of trophies.
The most convenient escape route presents itself in the form of a travelling circus – which we soon find to be highly abjectly mediocre, incompetent, and a white elephant to its former owner who was only too thrilled to turn over his deed to the jewel-wielding penguins.
The story progresses as most animated features will: faith in one’s self is examined, as are trust and desire, and the tried and true “the grass is always greener” trope is thrown in for good measure. But Madagascar 3 does each of these well. The script is pithy and the timing of comic relief superb. The vocal cast doesn’t hurt either. If there were a best ensemble for an animated feature, this would be near the top of the awards balloting. Jessica Chastain, Bryan Cranston, Martin Short, Chris Rock, Frances McDormand, and Ben Stiller contribute their reliable acting abilities to each character and make them come to life, as opposed to sitting stale on a screen waiting for something ridiculous to amuse the audience. Smurfs, Alvin, G-Force, Ice Age (the latters), I’m looking in your direction.
However, there are two things that irk me a bit about this film. They don’t destroy the film or the ability to enjoy it, but there is a pall cast. First, it is Captain Dubois, an initially strong-willed female villain, something lacking outside of the realm of witches, sea monsters, etc. She has moved up the ranks in the French police force – seemingly through force – and she is determined to catch her presumed criminals. While the villain because she chases our heroes, her strength and fortitude is admirable. At the same time, the films suggests this is contradictory to that which we want in our female villains. Soon after her epic moped chase through the streets of Monte Carlo, Dubois is zoomorphized, changed into an animal in demeanor, ability, and function. She scurries like a raccoon around the rail yard, briskly licks water from a recessed paw print, tasting it for Alex’s measurements, inhaling his residue through her nostrils like a pig seeking truffles. All this before she leaps along the rail lines like a leopard.
And while I understand that villains must possess abilities – most often seen with animalistic undertones – that are foreign to us in order to differentiate our motives from theirs, it seems a waste to simply elide a character determined to get what she wants. Does she need to be seen as an animal while our beastly protagonists are more and more anthropomorphized into visages closer to our neighbors than to our pets? It seems that something more could be done to show that the two worlds overlap. A cartoon like Madagascar 3 creates a binary, wherein the animals must be humanistic to be “good” and “genuine,” while the villains must be animals in their wicked souls.
In effect, this lessens the development of the character. While I didn’t love Brave, one thing to be said in its arc is that the mother was both a strong-willed matriarch and – via fate and her daughter’s precociousness – an animal. These two sides of the mother converged with positive and negative results. They created a genuine character with whom we empathized toward the end. Madagascar 3 avoids going this deep and rests on the standard demarcations of humans and animals to create heroes and villains.
The other deterrent is the need for a five minute sequence where the initial revised circus performance would have been. A good chunk of the film centered on training each performer to do what he or she does best and gain confidence in their acts. But, this was tossed away for a parlay into visual masturbation that seems only necessary to satisfy those who had spent twenty dollars to see the film in 3-D. We sat through the training montage; we deserved to see the results; but we don’t.
Despite a few flaws, Madagascar 3, overall, is fun and clever. It often echoes moments from Oceans 11 and Escape from Alcatraz to keep the adult audience on its toes. It genuinely tries to grab everyone’s attention, even if it alienates a tad.
