Scheduled to open June 8, 2012

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Just got back from seeing this with the family. I know there are some Dreamworks guys on the board(who have to put up with schmucks like me praising Pixar and downing DW, which I've done in the past), so I'll preface this by saying the original Madagascar is probably in my top 3 DW list(behind Prince of Egypt and HTTYD). The four leads are still an inspired grouping and Sascha Baren Coen is a great 5th wheel.

As for this outing, while I haven't seen every DW animated feature, I'd have to put Madagascar 3 near the bottom. It was just abysmally bad and devoid of any humor. I mean not a single joke worked for me. I didn't hear much in the way of laughter from the kids in the theater either(there was a group of older special needs kids loving the hell out it though). The whole thing just felt like a bad made for Saturday morning tv flick.

There was a single 1-2 minute scene near the end that I did love... It was touching and had heart. Now if only the other 90 minutes had a touch of that it might have turned out better.

Ugh, this was horrible. I'm always game for a kid's movie with my son as long as they are clever and well-done.

However, this was nothing more that exaggerated ethnic accents and pop-culture references. In other words, cheap laughs (although they weren't funny for the most part) and lazy writing. My son said that he liked it, but I didn't hear him laugh once that I recall.

I think you guys are being too hard on it. I thought the stuff before the circus was some good rollicking fun. I agree about the stuff at the end too. Yeah the circus train middle segment wasn't very good but I liked the Francis McDormand stuff enough to make it an entertaining flick. There were too many characters overall and I felt that certain actors were left with almost nothing to do (esp Schwimmer, who had maybe five minutes of dialogue the whole film).
Bryan Cranston has a wicked Russian accent -- I had no idea that was him until the credits. Too bad he wasn't even a little bit funny. Martin Short was wasted and sounded like the voice from Mario 64.

Too many new characters would also be my main complaint. The kids in the theater and my daughter all laughed quite a bit at this movie. It wasn't the greatest and I'm hoping Ice Age 4 will be better but we can't have all movies cater to us.

Schwimmer as Melman is probably one of my favorite animated casting choices(of the CG era). As you mentioned he didn't have jack to do in this one, which is another reason why it didn't work for me.