Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted

“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” is one of the fanciest cartoons ever put on the screen. The jokes come so fast they’re nearly subliminal. Plot points whiz by and when things threaten to blur, there’s a crazy musical number or a tightly worked out physical comedy routine. Then it’s back on the bullet train. Your brain goes breathless. This one begins right where the previous story left off. Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and the rest of the refugees from the Central Park Zoo are still stranded in Africa and yearning to get back where they belong. The rickety monkey-built plane from the last installment achieves liftoff, but the avaricious penguins and vainglorious King Julien the lemur (Sacha Baron Cohen) are, as usual, infuriating double-crossers, and our heroes are left to their own devices. With faultless cartoon logic, the menagerie scuba-dives to Monaco, where they make a shambles of the famed casino. With animal control officer Capt. Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand) in hot pursuit, they hide in a traveling circus, meeting new characters including Vitaly (Bryan Cranston), a growling, heavy-souled Siberian tiger. Capt. DuBois is the mirror image of the ineffectual gendarme, pursuing the runaway animals with ninja-like agility. She’s still French to the core, though, breaking into an extended Edith Piaf routine that will tickle kids even if they don’t get the context. A circus contract that could being the animals back to America sets up the finale, a spectacle of teamwork to the tune of Katy Perry’s “Firework” that ends the movie on a delirious high note.