From a blog post of December 21, 2013 titled "The Darkest Dreamworks Movie Ever". The post was incomplete when I went back to it, even though I distinctly remember finishing it and wouldn't have published it if I hadn't, so I re-finished it for here. The things I do for my fans.
Review of "Madagascar 3"
By C. Randall Nicholson
I don't bother watching most movies in theaters because a. I don't have money and b. most of them aren't worth the money or travel time anyway, so it wasn't until last night that I saw "Madagascar 3". I was skeptical, because the second installment of the trilogy was already inferior to the first, as sequels obviously designed to cash in on their predecessor's success usually are. I was interested to see that they took a completely different route with this one. Some might call it "jumping the shark", and those some would include me, but I have to give them points for their originality.
You see, whereas the first two were almost entirely comedies, this one incorporated a subplot that was nothing short of tragic, with its own protagonist - a human, no less. Her name was Chantelle DuBois. (Spelling? I could easily Google it but I don't care that much.)
To some casual observers Chantelle (unlike everyone in the movie, I refer to her by first name so as to humanize her) may appear as a stereotypical, two-dimensional, over-the-top, ridiculous cartoon villain. Never is an explicit motivation given for her actions aside from evil, evil, evil. But in her opening scene she reveals that her obsession with killing animals goes back to the age of seven. Seven. Surely the scriptwriters didn't intend to imply that a seven-year-old was evil? That's pushing it, even for a cartoon. And in Mormon doctrine, seven is less than eight, which is the age of accountability. Any true evil in her couldn't have sprouted until then.
Even Darla from "Finding Nemo" wasn't evil; just scary and clueless. Maybe even crazy. And that was obviously the problem here - poor Chantelle was very, very sick in the head. I'm not concerned with whether she was "born that way" or it emerged in response to environmental factors during her childhood. In either case, her parents didn't recognize the problem or didn't know what to do with it, so she remained untreated and eventually found a career that allowed her to indulge her sadistic obsession - like the dentist in "Little Shop of Horrors". Granted, in that case his mother actually encouraged him.
The tragedy of the story is that she never gets the help she needs. The animals she pursues recognize her as a "crazy lady" but use it as a derogatory term instead of referring her to a psychologist. The Roman police arrest her and lock her in a cell instead of sending her to a psychologist. No one understands. Even she doesn't understand. She's too far gone to realize how badly she needs help.
At the end (SPOILER ALERT) Chantelle ends up inside a zoo cage, and Alex the lion yells something like "Now you're behind bars, DuBois, where animals like you belong!" Am I the only one who wonders why an animal is using "animal" as an insult? Chantelle roars at him, apparently now so far gone that she isn't even coherent. Then she gets shot in the rump with a tranquilizer and slumps over, thoroughly degraded and humiliated. The next thing she knows she's bound and gagged in a crate headed for Madagascar, because apparently the human authorities let the animals do whatever they want with her. This would actually make sense if Madagascar really was a deserted island, which it isn't. And seeing a terrified woman bound and gagged just makes me really uncomfortable. A double standard, sure, but sue me.
You know how it should have ended? Alex should have eaten her. They wouldn't have had to show it on screen. Stuff like that is implied in kids' movies all the time. Then the animals would still be safe, and she would finally be out of her misery.
This movie made me sick. I realize it's just a cartoon and that most people can tell the difference between a poorly written deranged villainess and a real mentally ill person. However, the very real widespread misconception that mentally ill people are scary and dangerous is personally painful for me, and this movie plays off it for... for what? For laughs? I would have been okay with that if it was actually funny.
Here's another thing. When one of the protagonists is fired head first from a cannon into a cliff wall a few miles away without suffering so much as a concussion, it really makes it impossible for me to take seriously the notion that any of them are ever in any actual peril. The antagonist becomes about as threatening as Elmer Fudd. Which is fine, if that's what they were going for, but it didn't seem like it. Madagascar, like most Pixar and Dreamworks movies, was one of the more (dare I say it) "realistic" cartoons - as opposed to the ones where anything goes and no one ever dies.
Oh well. At least the first one is still good.
You see, whereas the first two were almost entirely comedies, this one incorporated a subplot that was nothing short of tragic, with its own protagonist - a human, no less. Her name was Chantelle DuBois. (Spelling? I could easily Google it but I don't care that much.)
To some casual observers Chantelle (unlike everyone in the movie, I refer to her by first name so as to humanize her) may appear as a stereotypical, two-dimensional, over-the-top, ridiculous cartoon villain. Never is an explicit motivation given for her actions aside from evil, evil, evil. But in her opening scene she reveals that her obsession with killing animals goes back to the age of seven. Seven. Surely the scriptwriters didn't intend to imply that a seven-year-old was evil? That's pushing it, even for a cartoon. And in Mormon doctrine, seven is less than eight, which is the age of accountability. Any true evil in her couldn't have sprouted until then.
Even Darla from "Finding Nemo" wasn't evil; just scary and clueless. Maybe even crazy. And that was obviously the problem here - poor Chantelle was very, very sick in the head. I'm not concerned with whether she was "born that way" or it emerged in response to environmental factors during her childhood. In either case, her parents didn't recognize the problem or didn't know what to do with it, so she remained untreated and eventually found a career that allowed her to indulge her sadistic obsession - like the dentist in "Little Shop of Horrors". Granted, in that case his mother actually encouraged him.
The tragedy of the story is that she never gets the help she needs. The animals she pursues recognize her as a "crazy lady" but use it as a derogatory term instead of referring her to a psychologist. The Roman police arrest her and lock her in a cell instead of sending her to a psychologist. No one understands. Even she doesn't understand. She's too far gone to realize how badly she needs help.
At the end (SPOILER ALERT) Chantelle ends up inside a zoo cage, and Alex the lion yells something like "Now you're behind bars, DuBois, where animals like you belong!" Am I the only one who wonders why an animal is using "animal" as an insult? Chantelle roars at him, apparently now so far gone that she isn't even coherent. Then she gets shot in the rump with a tranquilizer and slumps over, thoroughly degraded and humiliated. The next thing she knows she's bound and gagged in a crate headed for Madagascar, because apparently the human authorities let the animals do whatever they want with her. This would actually make sense if Madagascar really was a deserted island, which it isn't. And seeing a terrified woman bound and gagged just makes me really uncomfortable. A double standard, sure, but sue me.
You know how it should have ended? Alex should have eaten her. They wouldn't have had to show it on screen. Stuff like that is implied in kids' movies all the time. Then the animals would still be safe, and she would finally be out of her misery.
This movie made me sick. I realize it's just a cartoon and that most people can tell the difference between a poorly written deranged villainess and a real mentally ill person. However, the very real widespread misconception that mentally ill people are scary and dangerous is personally painful for me, and this movie plays off it for... for what? For laughs? I would have been okay with that if it was actually funny.
Here's another thing. When one of the protagonists is fired head first from a cannon into a cliff wall a few miles away without suffering so much as a concussion, it really makes it impossible for me to take seriously the notion that any of them are ever in any actual peril. The antagonist becomes about as threatening as Elmer Fudd. Which is fine, if that's what they were going for, but it didn't seem like it. Madagascar, like most Pixar and Dreamworks movies, was one of the more (dare I say it) "realistic" cartoons - as opposed to the ones where anything goes and no one ever dies.
Oh well. At least the first one is still good.
