The latest offering from the Madagascar series manages to improve upon the previous films by packing in the jokes, cranking up the zaniness and abandoning any remaining grasp on reality. It’s certainly a lot of fun but it’s as mad as a box of frogs. Or, indeed, a planeful of chimps.

Following on from the events of the previous film, pals Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) are stranded in Africa, after their penguin pals fly off to Monte Carlo for a holiday.

Homesick for New York, Alex persuades the gang to join the penguins and make their way back to the US. Somehow the furry friends manage to swim all the way to Monte Carlo and find the penguins. But – before you can say “flying zebra” – bloodthirsty amateur taxidermist and head of Animal Control Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand) is hot on their tails (ahem), keen to capture Alex’s head for her collection.

The pals take refuge with a travelling circus – joining the likes of sexy jaguar Gia (Jessica Chastain) and Russian tiger Vitaly (Bryan Cranston) – and soon they’re making their way through Europe trying to get back to New York and revamping the tired circus acts as they go.

Unsurprisingly, seeing as the script was co-written by Wes Anderson collaborator Noah Baumbach, the film is stuffed to the rafters with gags. Indeed it’s easy to miss a lot of the throwaway one-liners when the action is rocketing along faster than a tiny Cockney dog on flame-powered rollerblades (yes, that happens).

The good thing is that it’s all tremendous fun and – while none of the four leads are particularly funny themselves – the supporting cast of officious penguins, flamboyant lemurs and one very dim but well-meaning sea lion keeps the laughs coming. No matter how cynical you are, it’s very difficult not to find yourself grinning as you watch the circus perform their brand new, Cirque du Soleil inspired act, to – yes – a Katy Perry soundtrack.

Obviously, under the weight of all these hijinks, the plot quickly falls apart. We are encouraged to believe that a giraffe and a hippo can dance on a tightrope, a bear can ride a motorbike and that DuBois is able to track the animals through Europe using only her sense of smell.

You might think this would be a ridiculous bone to pick with a kids’ film in which the main characters are talking animals, but there just isn’t any kind of inherent logic in this world to anchor us back to an emotional core.

Perhaps the biggest problem here is that none of the characters behave or even really look like the animals they are portraying. Save for Sonya the bear, who for some reason doesn’t speak, all the characters have been anthropomorphized to such an extent that it’s difficult to see why they were made animals in the first place.

Ultimately, this cast of whacky misfit characters will make you laugh but they’re no Buzz and Woody. Then again, Madagascar 3 isn’t really trying to compete with Pixar. It’s trying to make something genuinely a bit mad. And at the end of the day, it succeeds.

Released in UK cinemas on Friday 19th October 2012 by DreamWorks.

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