Movie review: “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”

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Partner and both like animated movies, so long as they’re clever and well-made. For this reason, we don’t see many of them. 

 

 

But we both wanted to see “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.”

 

 

If you’re unfamiliar with the franchise: the stars are four animals from the Central Park Zoo – Alex the shy/showoff lion (Ben Stiller); Gloria the sentimental hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith); Melman the hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer); and Marty the hyperactive zebra (Chris Rock). The first movie took them (and a group of four paramilitary penguins) from New York to Madagascar, where they met a surreal band of lemurs led by the sublimely self-absorbed King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen); the second movie got them as far as Africa, where they dealt with their various back-to-nature issues, and in which Alex met his birth parents.

 

 

The third movie is as freewheeling and joyous as the first two, and maybe more so. Our heroes end up (don’t ask) in Monte Carlo, where they tangle with a vicious over-lipsticked ninja assassin animal control officer named Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand). They escape by hiding out with the animals of the Circus Zaragoza: a goofy sea lion (Martin Short), a broodingly angry tiger (Bryan Cranston), and a sweetly matter-of-fact jaguar (Jessica Chastain). The animals bond, and triumph over their various adversities.

 

 

But I didn’t need to tell you that, did I?

 

 

The fun of the movie is in the details. The dialogue is blazingly fast and funny. (Near the beginning of the movie, Alex the lion is romping through a model version of Manhattan. “Look!” he crows. “A street with eight Duane Reades!”) The plot twists are sharp and cleverly planned. (King Julien, the insane lemur, falls in love while in Rome, and needs a ring to seal his love. And, if you’re in Rome and want to steal a ring, who has the biggest and best ring of all?) The character development is surprisingly deep. (Vitaly, the Russian tiger, has a wonderful story arc, and his final redemption is brought about by hair conditioner. That’s a spoiler, but you’ll never figure it out in a million years without seeing the movie.) Some of the jokes are actually sophisticated. (DuBois the animal-control officer does a killer rendition of Piaf’s “Je ne regrette rien” to inspire her fellow animal-control officers, and I would love to know if that’s really Frances McDormand singing, because – if so – she’s terrific.) The animation is beautiful: there’s a chase through the streets of Monte Carlo that is spectacularly gorgeous, and I’m convinced they must have taken the animators there to get the details right.

 

 

And – I never thought I’d say this – I wish we’d seen this movie in 3D. You could see it in every scene: stuff popping out at you, characters flying through the air, sudden vertiginous angles. Maybe another time.

 

 

And here’s another spoiler-without-being-a-spoiler: there is a wonderful circus scene – all of the circus acts taking place around each other, in midair, in bright colors, dancing and doing trapeze routines, set to Katy Perry’s “Firework,” that is truly entrancing and joyful.

 

 

Can you tell I enjoyed this movie?

 

 

Go. Take the kids, and grandma, and tell your friends. Forget your troubles and spend a pleasant ninety minutes.

 

 

You won’t regret it.

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Movie review: “The Debt”

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Partner and I saw “The Debt” this past weekend. We mostly went for Helen Mirren, who is good in pretty much anything she does. (If you haven’t seen “The Queen,” drop your needlepoint and rush out to rent it, or something.) For once, I didn’t know the movie’s plot in advance; I only knew generally that it involved some Israeli Mossad agents who were reactivated to complete some unfinished business.

Who doesn’t like a spy thriller? A good spy thriller, I mean, with a little subtlety: good, and evil, and the huge gray area in-between. And huge symbols: the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall. Drab central-European landscapes and nondescript cities – Prague? Budapest? Berlin? Churches, dilapidated castles . . .

You know I hate suspense. I usually make a point of learning the ending in advance, just so I don’t have to suffer. Well, I didn’t see this one coming, so for once I had the pleasure of being surprised. The movie has a very neat twist about halfway through, which I did not expect.

But: the story is morally very cut-and-dried, good and evil, Mossad versus Nazi-butcher-in-hiding: how much more clear-cut can you get? We know who’s good and who’s evil.

But, then again, no we don’t.

There are some big plot holes here, which require some major suspension of disbelief.

But, in this movie, it’s all about the casting.

Each of the three main characters is seen in 1965 and in 1997, and so we require two actors for each. David, the sensitive soul, is Sam Worthington (who spent most of his time as a blue long-tailed alien in “Avatar”), and also Ciaran Hinds, who was the imperious Julius Caesar in the TV series “Rome.” Both are staring and vulnerable and very moving. Stefan, the pushy officious leader, is Marton Csokas, who was Celeborn in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and who’s very good (and also very handsome, and nice in a tight t-shirt) here, and also as Tom Wilkinson, that really stellar actor who can do pretty much anything. And Rachel, the key member of the group, is Jessica Chastain (whom I only recently met in “The Help,” as a vulnerable young housewife), and in later life, Helen Mirren, about whom I need say very little.

Lovely, all six of them.

But I need to say a word about the wonderful (and heretofore unknown to me) Danish actor Jesper Christensen.

His was a difficult role: a reworking of the Josef Mengele story. We first meet him as a doctor in East Berlin in 1965, and he is considerate and gentle and kind. We know he has butchered babies and children, back in the concentration camps; we try to keep all of that in mind. But he is enormously manipulative, and ultimately vicious. He uses his voice, his soft gentle reasonable voice, to accomplish everything. Early on in the movie, I thought: My god, he’s the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He’s using words to make these nice young people doubt themselves, and do things they shouldn’t do.

This movie: it’s a good old time in the cinema. There are some nasty bloody scenes, but you can shield your eyes. I did.

Go see it.

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