Movie Reviews: Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted

Left stranded in Africa by the dastardly penguins, Alex the Lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock); Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer), pop across to Europe and join a circus, with the intention of making their way back home to a New York zoo. So begins Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (G), which is essentially a madcap, whirlwind tour of some of the continent’s best-known landmarks, and particularly those of London and Rome. Beloved by the very young for the zany humour of its irrepressible characters, the Madagascar quartet may this time sorely test the patience of an older audience. The over-the-top finale suggests that the franchise has finally trundled to an end — can we now hope for a feature-length movie starring those irascible penguins?

A class of schoolchildren who all resemble characters from classic horror movies? It can only be Tim Burton, whose latest film, the animated tale

Frankenweenie (PG), is an affectionate homage to the Golden Age of the horror flick. Thus our hero is young Victor Frankenstein (voiced by Charlie Tahan), a boy whose interest in science is taken as a sign of his weirdness in the 1950’s Norman Rockwell-style town of New Holland — although it’s Victor’s fascination with all things scientific that allows him to bring his late, beloved dog Sparky back from the dead. Can Victor keep the reanimated Sparky a secret? Or will his classmates, desperate to win the big science prize, cause chaos by using Victor’s technique to resurrect half the town’s cemetery? This being a Tim Burton joint, there are no prizes for guessing which way the story rolls. The audience is on board with the geeks and freaks from the beginning, cheering for the outsider — and in the process, for education, and particularly science — to succeed. A quirky cast including Catherine O’Hara, Martin Landau and Winona Ryder, flesh out the stop-motion animation, which is exquisitely realised. As is becoming increasingly the case with Tim Burton’s movies, however, the look of the film takes precedence over establishing a genuine emotional connection with the characters. There’s lashings of style, but you may struggle to care about this particular boy and his dog.

Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert) are best friends, teenagers growing up in a Britain that was already drab enough in 1962 without the spectre of ‘the bomb’ casting its long shadow. Directed by Sally Potter, Ginger & Rosa (15A) explores the girls’ different ways of dealing with the possibility of imminent oblivion: where the thoughtful, sensitive Ginger turns to poetry and CND protests, the religious Rosa abandons herself to the pleasures of the flesh, embarking on an affair with Ginger’s father, Roland (Alessandro Nivola). Strong performances from Fanning and Englert enliven a rather self-consciously arty polemic on male inadequacy. The excellent supporting cast of Timothy Spall, Annette Bening, Jodhi May and Oliver Platt are given very little to do but look on from the sidelines.

The fourth film in any series almost inevitably falls foul of the law of diminishing returns, and Paranormal Activity 4 (15A) is no exception. Opening with a short prologue in which a baby boy is abducted by his aunt, the story moves forward five years to 2011, when teenager Alex (Kathryn Newton) begins to document the strange behaviour of her six-year-old neighbour Robbie (Brady Allen). Is Robbie simply odd, lacking the normal social graces? Or is the invisible friend he talks to something infinitely more sinister? Employing the realism of the ‘found footage’ style and the naturalistic performances (Newton and her onscreen boyfriend Matt Shively are particularly impressive) that have characterised the previous offerings in the Paranormal Activity franchise, this outing is very effective at building tension for the first hour or so. Unfortunately, it overreaches itself in the last 20 minutes and mutates into a traditional — and not particularly interesting — bump-and-scream horror.