Highly energetic, possibly misogynic animation about humanoid mammals running their own circus.

Rating: 8/10 (2 January 2014)

Superb for those who crave a variety of charismatic humanoid mammalian animations, and long stretches of virtually non-stop supersonic action or slapstick, punctuated by heart to heart dialog. For me as an adult, it gets pretty exhausting and mind-numbingly irrelevant to reality at times. As with most cartoons and animations, it promotes the fantasy that humans and animals can routinely defy the laws of physics and have an infinite number of reincarnations after having been subjected to numerous normally fatal or near fatal bodily insults. Obviously, these are very attractive fantasies for humans, especially children.
As in the case of the recent animation "The Pirates: Band of Misfits", not to mention some classic fairy tales, this film risks being perceived as misogynic, as the constant prime villain is characterized as a woman in authority(In this case, a fanatical, virtually indestructible, French animal control police woman, who shoots anesthetizing darts at them, hoping to add a mounted lion head to her extensive wall collection of animal heads, along with returning the others to their home zoo). Perhaps the idea is that the direct authority figures for most children(mothers, step-mothers, teachers) are primarily women. Hence, the children are identifying with the pirates, scientists, animals or damsel whom the authority figure wants to control or harm. The persecuted humans or animals thus become the heroes in rebelling against the traditional or abusing authority, just as children often wish they could invent their own individual or group activities rather than being directed by robotic authority figures. In this film, the animals eventually are able to own and control their own circus, thus can devise their own amusements for others, as children(and adults) often wish.
The other significant intellectual issue is the attitude toward whether it's better for non-domesticated animals to be in their native habitat or confined to a zoo, circus, home or other human-devised enclosure. 'Born-free' fanatics abhor any kind of human-devised confinement and, often, any killing of non-domesticated animals. They forget that nature also is often cruel: that unprotected animals often die of starvation, thirst, poaching, predation or health risks. This point is dramatized to some extent in Madagascar I & II.
The ending of the recent animation film "Rio", with an exhilarating escape of the last two known members of a macaw species into the native jungle, plays on the human emotional bias of wanting to escape physical confinement and the behavioral limits enforced or encouraged by authority figures or, in the case of Blu, by one's own timidness. In reality, assuming that humans had worked out how to promote good reproduction and survival under confined conditions, you wouldn't want to release the last few individuals of a species into the wild, where they and their offspring face many more potential life-threatening challenges, with the possible exception of communicable diseases and parasites. The wise Tulio knows this. But, Jewel, having tasted the freedom of her(much reduced) native forest, and unaware of her own extreme rarity, refuses to accept continued life in confinement, however safe, and has convinced lifelong pet Blu to try to overcome his fears of dealing with the unknown of an unprotected habitat: a good message for children.
In the present film, the animals are not characterized as being among the last few of their species. Initially, they decide to try to return to their 'home' in the barred NYC Central Park Zoo, having discovered the downsides to living in their native African habitat. To get there, they jump on a European circus train to escape capture, learn about the circus as a potential fun lifestyle and buy it. They now can have the best of both worlds. As long as they please the customers with their antics(which they initially fail to do), they can have fun, choosing their antics, and not worry about starving or being eaten by predators, nor about being mistreated by human owners. However, first, they have to eliminate than mad French animal control woman, who has followed them to NYC to accomplish her goals. Finally, they subdue her, and she is last seen in a crate bound for Madagascar(which once was a French colony.)
Of course, real animals can't own and manage their own circus or zoo. However, as of recent times, they may be lucky enough to escape both the dangers of wild habitats and the boredom and possible mistreatment of confinement in cages, by a more practical alternative: the trend toward open habitat zoos and large aviaries, so that humans can observe them in somewhat natural conditions. That would have been a fitting finale message.
Didn't miss that crack about the French and Canadians being ultralazy!