{h( !loSIOII<5lobt MOVlc REVIEW Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted CirclJs atmosphere By Tom R"no GIOOIIC<lff..~ I J.... a, 21112 Te.tsize iii a mI S~... 0 ~ 0 mShareThi. B Is it safe to say that a studio has officially, obnoxiously overdone a mmie's marketing when a re.iew cannot help but discuss the commercials first? Yes, the kids and I laughed (not inappropriately, hopefully) the first couple oftimes we saw Chris Rock's "Madagascar 3" ad spot v.ith Marty the 2ebra doing his circus­ afro shtick. For all his sociopolitical saV\Y, Rock also knows silly, and he made it work. But I wish we had kept count of how many times per day we would end up seeing the thing m'er the next se\'eral weeks. Six? Ten? Way too many, certainly, for a gag so fragilelydependent on the Gilbert Gottfried School's loud-is-funny paradigm. You can picture the DreamWorks corporate confab: "OK the kids respond to move-it. move-it repetition - gi\'e us something else repetiti\'e. and let's get herding." It wasn't just desperate. it was insulting. It also was not entirely necessary. There's some bona fide big-top wonder in this team-up betv.·een ragtag European circus critters (notably Bryan Cranston's "Breaking Bad"-broody Russian tiger) and Central Park Zoo expats Marty, Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Melman the giraffe (Da\id Schv.immer), and Gloria the hippo Ty Burr's top 10 animated (Jada Pinkett Smith). Cascading, colorful 3-D movies perfonnance sequences are sufficiently da22ling Th. 1k>o1OO Globe m",;e critk that youll forgi\'e the bajillionth soundtrack OOOIn1«l down his"", 10 anim.1«I filmsofalltime, sampling of"Firev.·ork." There's also script material oo-written by Noah Baumbach (Stiller's Find ._nandtlleate.. "Greenberg"), seemingly a fresh choice. (Grov.ll­ for·Madaga.car J: E....ope·. MostWante<f ups can entertain themselves guessing what Find ._Imn andthelle.. Baumbach might haw contributed: the risque for ·Madaga.car J: Ell/ope'. stuffbetv.·een Sacha Baron Cohen's King Julien MostWamed JD' and a feral she-bear? The Cirque du Soleil riffs?) And there's some fun patter from Martin Short. MOVIE REVIEW surprisingly avoiding staleness himself as a ••• Roberto Benigni-broad Italiano seaL MADAGASCAR J: E....ope·. MostWanted There might be ewn more to offset the mmie's Di,ected by: Ene Darnell, Tom beaten-to-death signature bit if an act wasn't McG<a1!l, wasted on geographic housekeeping­ and Conrad Vernon something about those rascally penguins and Written by' Dameli chimps being in Monte Carlo, hedonistically and Noah Baurnllacn squandering the ingenuity that could get the Staning: vo<ces of Ben Stille" gang home. It's the same lesson that the "Beverly CMs Rod<., Hills Cop" crew never learned: Why not just lose Dav;d Sdlwimme,. the setting from your title. and free up your Jada P;n~ett Sn'W1!l, sequel plotting completely? StilL this convoluted and 5acna Baron Collen stretch does introduce Frances McDonnand's At BoslOO Common, Fenway. sumHtlS amusing Capitaine DuBois. an animal-control Running time, 93 mnutes gendanne v.ith an anti-PETA streak worthy of Rated: PG jsome mid action and Cruella De ViI. and whose dogged pursuit chases rude hUmor) our heroes to the circus. She's as ridiculously relentless as those ads. Almost. anyv.·ay. Tom Russo 0011 be reached at tl'[email protected].•.