Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted Review (Great)
Review by NJ.com
It’s not just human stars who have to worry about scene stealers in Hollywood. Cartoon animals have to beware, too.
The first “Madagascar” (2005) introduced us to four Central Park Zoo denizens — a vain lion, a kooky zebra, a hypochondriac giraffe and a don’t-mess-with-me hippo — who were feeling a little penned up. The jokes came from a plot that took these jaded New Yorkers out of Gotham and put them in an exotic wild they were in no way prepared for. It was a fun idea, but the characters remained sketchy. Which gave the supporting beasts their chance. Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett Smith remained the in-voice-only stars of the cartoon. But the real attractions became the extra, oddball beasts, including the slightly insane lemur king Julien and a crew of gung-ho penguins.
Review by Denver Post
From time to time the improbable occurs: A sequel outdoes its original. It doesn’t happen so often that critics are forced to eat crow about their distrust of Hollywood’s repeat offenders.
Still, “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” has me delighting not in crow but in zebra, hippo, giraffe and, of course, lion. Not to mention happily devouring a menagerie of characters that includes lemurs, a tiger, a bear, a leopard, a sea lion and penguins. Vivid, zippy and wisecrackingly enjoyable, this misadventure finds Central Park Zoo escapees Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) homesick for their New York City enclosures. When last we saw them, their indefatigable penguin compatriots, led once again by Skipper (voice of co-director Tom McGrath), had left them in Africa as they and their chimp-powered plane set a course for a Mediterranean casino in Monte Carlo.
Review by Washington Post
The increasingly tenuous connection of each successive “Madagascar” movie to the franchise’s original premise — homesick New York zoo animals at large in a scary world — is stretched pretty thin in “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.” And that is a very good thing.
A very, very good thing. The third outing in the popular series of animated adventures about Alex the lion (voice of Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) may be the best of the bunch, simply because it busts the leash that tethers it to anything resembling reality. The level of divine lunacy it aspires to is signaled early on. To escape from Monaco — where our heroes have traveled from Africa searching for the airplane they hope will take them home — an order is given to shake the Monte Carlo animal control officer who is determined to stop them from leaving: “Deploy banana gun.”
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