They say you can't go home again…yet, what is it in our savage nature that cries out for us to return to our roots and our origins? What are those feelings that flow through veins and reach to our very bowels that compel a longing gaze backward instead of forward? It's an eternal question, one that has puzzled philosophers and wise men for ages, yet the brave filmmakers of "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" have ventured to plumb those thematic depths, in a film that will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Directed by Tom McGrath and Conrad Vernon, the project brings together the humble talents of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer, Jessica Chastain, Bryan Cranston and Martin Short, to tell the powerful, continental tale of a crew of hardscrabble, scrappy wildlife animals — standins for a wild variety of humanity that populates this fragile Earth — who find themselves taking cover in a modest traveling circus in the hopes that they can make their way home to the place where the American Dream can be made possible: New York City. (“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years," Thomas Wolfe once wrote.) Their journey will be fraught, it may even been frightening, but the story penned by Noah Baumbach will also show us noble truths through the joy of laughter and animation, in a cinematic experience that will bond us with our fellow moviegoers, leaving us as brothers in arms against the never-ending, tyrannical battle against time.
The Cannes Film Festival runs from May 16-27. The soul altering "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" will arrive on June 8th courtesy of DreamWorks Animated Films. [THR]
