Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted Reviews
Top Critic
This is that rare thing: a franchise that grows more winning with each instalment.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
From time to time the improbable occurs: A sequel outdoes its original.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
The screenplay, by Eric Darnell and Noah Baumbach, churns out the snappy witticisms with admirable creative gusto, but it whizzes along at such a frenetic pace that you'll probably miss half of them.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The clever lines and themes of friendship and finding home are almost completely overwhelmed here by the breathless pace and sensory overload...
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| Original Score: 2/4
What might be barely tolerable in a seven-minute short gave me the biggest headache since "Transformers: Dark of the Moon.''
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| Original Score: 1/4
[It] may be the best of the bunch, simply because it busts the leash that tethers it to anything resembling reality.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Set at a frenzied pace meant to connote fun, it mostly feels like a frenetic spectacle.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Kids will be stimulated. And, parents, you'll enjoy the sights.
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| Original Score: 3/5
"Madagascar 3" is all about exuberant motion, cute characters and gorgeous colors. It aims for the eyes, not the heart.
A neon-saturated, high-flying trapeze act with enough frenetic funny business that it's a wonder the folks behind this zillion-dollar franchise about zoo critters on the lam didn't send the animals to the circus sooner.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
A riot of splashy colors, silly 3-D gimmicks, big, broad kid-friendly gags - and those professionally pesky penguins.
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| Original Score: B-
Cascading, colorful 3-D performance sequences are sufficiently dazzling that you'll forgive the bajillionth soundtrack sampling of "Firework."
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Your brain goes breathless and giddy struggling to keep up.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
If you typically check the ingredients on the stuff you feed your kids, here is what you'll find in "Madagascar 3": jokes, Katy Perry music and less than 2 percent of character development and emotional warmth.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
I have to give props to a movie that ascends from eccentricity to insanity without losing its footing.
Despite a script co-written by Noah Baumbach, "Madagascar 3" can't upgrade its own shtick, becoming a craven example of a fast-buck, no-fun family film.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
It's silly, and it's lazy. And yet, again, it's pretty funny.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
The movie zooms along at a clip so quick, it sometimes overwhelms.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The story in Madagascar 3 is functional, but the antically civilized spirit is infectious.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
It has value only as a way to engage a very young viewer until his or her attention span expires.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Marks the spot where a shrill and unfunny kid franchise made the leap into hilarious and engaging family entertainment.
The animation is grand, and the lovely images may be enough to send really young kids away happy. Their parents might leave feeling they've been taken in by some carny sleight-of-hand, though.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Madagscar 3 is less interested in plucking the last bit of meat off the series's bones than with simply picking the lowest-hanging fruit.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Like a big-screen Big Gulp, this third installment of the billion-dollar animated franchise contains as much cinematic confection as an 85-minute movie can bear.
...off-kilter wit and smarts to an animated bestiary that keeps you laughing while eloquently re-defining where home is.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
This is the rare animated property that has consistently improved on its ho-hum origins.
Yes, it's a cartoon, but it's conspicuously unmodulated, with the volume set on high and the pacing all but pushed to fast-forward.
