Saw Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (thanks, Paul!) It was the latest installment of the ongoing adventures of those oh-so-zany animals. Either the schtick is showing it age or I was in a bad mood or something, but I didn't really dig this one. It opens tremendously strongly, with the animals escaping from a casino, being chased by an animal control officer woman who looks like Lucille Ball with a pear-shaped body. That woman is hilarious. For a dowdy, dumpy lady, she is hilariously lithe and cat-like. That's a great joke. Then they hide out from her in a train full of circus animals. It is at this point that I began to get bored.
The circus animals have no personalities. The most memorable can be summed up with a single adjective each: angry, sexy, stupid, etc. There's a pair of elephants who are complete non-entities, ditto for the show-horses. The worst new character is this Italian seal with a "Mama-mia! My-a spaghetti!"-style accent who is supposed to be lovably dumb. The trouble here is that the lovably-dumb role is amply filled by every other character in the film. They are all lovably dumb with flashes of competence when needed to move the plot forward. So, we get a completely pointless addition to the cast who (because he is supposed to dumber) is not even competent and therefore has flashes of neediness when the plot must be pushed. This is kind of grating.
The animals spend a long time working on circus acts. This sequence is light on comedy but full of character development, so okay I guess. Note though that the characters develop in ways that don't really matter: the zebra discovers he likes to fly, the lion hits on a cheetah, etc. This is just how this franchise works however. This is really a sitcom in disguise so no major changes can be allowed to disrupt the formula. Anyway, there's a great ongoing joke that's introduced here: One tiger's act is physically impossible, acknowledged as such, and never shown. It's a huge and purposeful plot-hole and I find it pretty funny that they never address it at all.
But apart from that, there's not much else that's very funny. They at last debut their act (which is of course a kick-ass performance) and the animal-catcher rouses her troops (via a great, nonsense-french rendition of Je Ne Regrette Rien. Everyone has running-mascara-tears, even the guys.) The film picks up a bit but ultimately of course we have to have lessons and closure and also the super-competent woman must be humbled and defeated. The film doesn't recapture the greatness of the opening sequence.
Also, The film gives King Julian a love interest. Worse, he is pathetically in love with her (her! I mean, c'mon, we all know what Julian's effeminate mincing and love of dance music is really about, right?) This is a throw-back to the "hilarious" gender-role jokes of the 20s, with fussy dukes and their bull-ish duchesses, all of which I think is pretty tasteless. I don't really want to make a huge deal out of this because, after all, this is a bigger issue than mere lazy writing, but it is annoying none the less. Also, it's very out of character for Julian. King Julian's thing is that he's hilariously entitled, pompous, and vain but also a Machiavellian schemer. In the last film, he somehow enslaved the entire population of flamingos within days of arriving. In this film he's a mere buffoon. He should be snubbing the romantic advances of others, not making pathetic advances of his own. I like Julian. I don't want him to be nice and stupid.
Anyway, all of this is to say that although the film definitely has some very good parts in it, this franchise is running out of steam. There are long periods where wheels just spin and there's queasy romance and sincerity. Let's hope this franchise can pull out its slump before the next installment. It's not bad yet. Yet.
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