Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted

Eric Darnell directed this 2012 animation with Tom McGrath and Conrad Vernon, running the zoo animals through a Monte Carlo casino into a collapsing circus touring Europe. Their pursuer Chantel DuBois is no standard cartoon antagonist: she wants Alex’s head for her taxidermy collection, and the film plays that straight. The emotional weight sits with the newcomers. Vitaly, a tiger who lost his nerve after an accident during his hoop act, owns the only real arc, while Alex and Marty stand where the previous two films left them. The close retires the engine of the series: the animals stay with the circus instead of returning to the zoo, dropping the goal two films had chased. Noah Baumbach delivered sixty pages of rewrites, a detail that surfaced through a Jeffrey Katzenberg email in 2010. DuBois was Frances McDormand’s first animated role. Crowds were generated with Massive software, lifting the first film’s roughly 100,000 figures to half a million. During the circus act the black light comes up and the hoops and spiral ramps glow neon, with no jokes and no plot for its length. A good fit if you accept Vitaly carrying the film while the original four stand still. Not for anyone who will resent the homecoming goal of two films being abandoned at the finish.