IMDb plot summary: Alex, Marty, Gloria and Melman are still fighting to get home to their beloved Big Apple. Their journey takes them through Europe where they find the perfect cover: a traveling circus, which they reinvent - Madagascar style.
Directed by Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath, and Conrad Vernon. Starring Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith.
(Spoilers about the overall story arc.)
I watched this without having seen the middle one and having seen the first one a LONG time ago, and so I was a little disoriented at the beginning. While the plot is very straightforward, the movie doesn't spend much time recapping its characters (probably fair, assuming its core audience is families who have seen the first two multiple times) and having to keep track of the MANY characters involved left me a bit lost. Took me 2/3 of the movie to realize the hippo and the giraffe are romantically involved.
That little hiccup aside, I felt really... neutral about this movie. It wasn't annoying like some of DreamWorks' movies have been (Shark Tale UGGGH) but nor did it really strive for anything new or interesting. It invokes the tired trope of "main character lies to people, makes friends with them, and then everybody is all hurt and betrayed when they find out he lied to them," which seems to be one of the most common kids' movie plots, and, frankly, I'm just sick of it.
There are no surprises in this movie whatsoever, the jokes don't really work for me (although, again, I wasn't bothered by them). I will say the circus performance scenes were really visually engaging -- very captivating animation there.
As a whole, though, I feel about this one the same way I did about the first. There's nothing that really hits me about this movie, and I'm sure I'll have forgotten it in a year, just like I forgot the first one.
2 stars.
Flickchart: #1518 out of 2184, below The Hiding Place and above In Cold Blood.
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