The penguins robbed a Monte Carlo casino, and that is somehow not the strangest thing in Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. DreamWorks Animation’s third trip with the Central Park Zoo crew sends Alex the lion and his friends sprinting across Europe, dodging the head of Monaco’s animal control service, who wants Alex’s head mounted on a wall, and hiding inside a failing circus. It is loud, fast and frequently funny.
Trailer, via Universal Kids.
A Casino Heist and a Very Determined Chantel DuBois
The plot picks up with the animals still stranded in East Africa. The penguins — Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private — plus chimps Mason and Phil have already flown off in a modified airplane to Monte Carlo. Alex, Marty, Melman, Gloria and the lemurs King Julien, Mort and Maurice follow, hoping to collect them and finally get home to the Central Park Zoo in New York City.
They find the penguins and chimps at the Monte Carlo Casino. Then the cover blows. Enter Capitaine Chantel DuBois, head of Monaco’s animal control service, voiced by Frances McDormand. She is not there to file paperwork. She wants Alex’s head for her taxidermy collection, and she pursues the animals with a single-mindedness that borders on the operatic.
The escape is the best sequence in the film. When the aircraft crash-lands beyond repair, the animals board a departing circus locomotive. That is where Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted finds its real engine.
Circus Zaragoza, Vitaly and the Hoop That Broke Him
The train belongs to Circus Zaragoza. Its stars are Stefano, a New Zealand sea lion voiced by Martin Short; Gia, a jaguar voiced by Jessica Chastain; and Vitaly, a Siberian tiger voiced by Bryan Cranston. The circus animals do not trust outsiders, so Alex lies and claims his group is American circus talent.
The circus is booked for a show in Rome, then one in London, where the performers hope to impress a promoter and land their first American tour. To keep the lie alive, the penguins buy the circus outright from its human ringmaster using the fortune from Monte Carlo. It is a clean, cynical joke about who actually holds power in this franchise, and the film does not linger on it.
Rome goes badly. The Colosseum show is a disaster, and afterward Stefano tells Alex the truth: the circus was once famous, and Vitaly was its star, jumping through ever-smaller hoops. An accident during one of those stunts cost him his passion, and the whole troupe has suffered since.
What the Table Shows About the Cast
The film’s comedy runs on two tracks: returning players who know their rhythms, and new arrivals who get the bigger swings. Here is how the pieces line up.
| Performer | Character | Status in the franchise |
|---|---|---|
| Ben Stiller | Alex | Returning |
| Chris Rock | Marty | Returning |
| David Schwimmer | Melman | Returning |
| Jada Pinkett Smith | Gloria | Returning |
| Sacha Baron Cohen | King Julien | Returning |
| Cedric the Entertainer | Maurice | Returning |
| Andy Richter | Mort | Returning |
| Tom McGrath | Skipper / Policeman #1 | Returning |
| Frances McDormand | Chantel DuBois | New |
| Jessica Chastain | Gia | New |
| Bryan Cranston | Vitaly | New |
| Martin Short | Stefano | New |
The new names do the heavy lifting. McDormand turns DuBois into a genuine threat rather than a cartoon obstacle, and Cranston gives Vitaly a sulk that reads as real injury. Chastain’s Gia is the film’s quietest presence, and Alex’s crush on her is the only thread in Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted that asks for patience instead of speed.
The Alps, the Bear and the Roman Prison
Not every detour earns its screen time. King Julien falls for Sonya, a performing Eurasian brown bear, and DuBois chases the pair through Vatican City. She fails to catch them and ends up in prison. It is a funny image and a disposable one; the film never returns to it with any weight.
The Alps sequence matters more. There, Alex convinces the circus animals to build a new act, and the film finally slows down enough to let the troupe work as an ensemble rather than a set of running gags. The payoff is the London show, where the circus performs for the promoter and the animals make their play for an American tour.
Hans Zimmer, 93 Minutes and a $747 Million Gross
The machinery behind Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted is as polished as anything DreamWorks Animation shipped in 2012. Eric Darnell, Conrad Vernon and Tom McGrath directed. Darnell and Noah Baumbach wrote it. Hans Zimmer composed the score, as he did for the previous films in the franchise.
DreamWorks announced the third film in August 2008, three months before the second film, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, reached theaters. The finished film premiered out of competition at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2012, and Paramount Pictures released it in the United States on June 8, 2012.
The Numbers Behind the Menagerie
- Title: Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted
- Release year: 2012
- Directors: Eric Darnell, Conrad Vernon, Tom McGrath
- Writers: Eric Darnell, Noah Baumbach
- Runtime: 93 minutes
- Score: Hans Zimmer
- Cannes premiere: May 18, 2012
- U.S. release: June 8, 2012
- Budget: $145 million
- Gross: $747 million
- Metacritic: 60/100
- Tagline: “They have one shot to get back home.”
Where the Money Went and Where It Did Not
The numbers tell a simple story. A $747 million gross against a $145 million budget made Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted the eighth highest-grossing film of 2012. The circus set pieces are built for scale, and the Europe-hopping structure gives the animators a new backdrop every twenty minutes.
But scale is not the same as shape. The film has three endings — Rome, the Alps, London — and each one resets the stakes instead of raising them. DuBois is the only pressure that carries across the whole runtime, and once she is in a Vatican City prison, the film loses its sharpest edge. What remains is a circus redemption arc that is warm, well-voiced and entirely predictable.
A 6.0 Is the Right Number
Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted is the best-looking and best-voiced entry in the series, and it is still a film that mistakes motion for momentum. The Monte Carlo escape and the DuBois pursuit are the work of people who know exactly how to stage a chase. The circus material is the work of people who know exactly what an audience expects and intend to deliver precisely that.
The Metacritic score of 60/100 lands where it should. This is not a failure. It is a competent, expensive, genuinely amusing film that never risks anything after its opening act. McDormand and Cranston are the reason to watch it; the plot is the reason to forget it by dinner.
Alex and his friends have now been trying to get home across three films, and the getting-home part has become a formality the movies keep postponing. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted solves that by making the detour the point. It works once.
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