It’s fitting that cheesy puffs play a significant role in "Penguins of Madagascar" – forget eating fish; these birds’ love of orange dusted Styrofoam is only matched by Cartman. After all, that’s exactly what the movie is: a light, airy, instantly disposable but admittedly tasty synthetic snack. One doesn’t really watch Dreamworks’ latest animated romp as much as one mindlessly consumes it, pleasantly noshing and noshing and noshing until … wait, where’d it all go? Was that seriously the whole bag? And why am I still hungry?

"Penguins" opens up with the origins of animated franchise’s breakout stars, here baby chicks marching through Antarctica. When an egg rolls past – headed for certain doom and ignored by their beaked brethren – fearless leader Skipper (Tom McGrath), brainiac Kowalski (Chris Miller) and agent of chaos Rico (Conrad Vernon) decide they’re putting up a fight against nature and head off to save the unhatched bird.

Even with a dangerous run-in with some seals and an amusing cameo from Werner "It's not a significant wound" Herzog, the trio manages to pull off the rescue. The egg hatches into Private (Christopher Knights), their fourth member. The team together and complete, they set off into the sunset for more adventure.

Cut to the very end of "Madagascar 3." While the series’ stars dance and sing (you thought you were safe from "I Like To Move It" and the polka dot afro song? Ha!), the flightless foursome takes off for their next mission. Along the way, however, they come across a plot that threatens all penguinkind: A villainous octopus named Dave (John Malkovich), angry after years of mistreatment from zoos and zoo-goers stumbling over themselves to fawn over cute and cuddly penguins, has a serum to turn the birds into malformed, uncontrollable monsters.

The quartet escapes Dave’s eight-armed clutches and travels the globe to stop his mass penguin-napping. They’re not the only animals on the job, however. A band of sophisticated operatives called The North Wind – led by a no-nonsense husky named Classified (voiced by the smooth baritone of Benedict Cumberbatch) – is also on the case and don’t exactly see the seemingly helpless, too-cute-to-be-capable penguins as useful allies.

Not ones to be easily held back, Skipper and company reject the condescending agents of The North Wind and journey to save the penguins themselves. But they’ve got their own image issues, as a growingly exasperated Private is still considered the baby of the group because of his adorable cuteness.

Cue family-friendly messages about working as a team and how looks don’t matter – though considering the climax is built around the desperate need to re-cute-ify the penguins, who instantly turn into mindless menaces when made ugly, the latter message doesn’t quite hit its mark. 

As with the past "Madagascar" chapters, the inspiration seems to be the old Looney Tunes cartoons. "Penguins" has the same screwball sense of humor and manic energy, peppering the audience with a frantic barrage of jokes, wordplay and just plain wackiness. Some scenes play like the writers were working with Mad Libs, like a sequence where an octopus in a vending machine smashes security guards around Fort Knox while banjos maniacally pluck in the background.

It’s certainly fun, and there are many laughs to be had (Dave’s habit of accidentally calling his octopi henchmen celebrity names – "Nicolas, cage them!" – is such a dumb running gag … and I laughed every time). Much like Skipper, I like its moxie, but let me instantly double back and say dial back the moxie. "Penguins of Madagascar" stops for nothing; it’s always off to the next kooky joke or the next sugar rush of a chase scene.

With all that relentless mania, there’s little to grip onto in the movie. The story is forgettable, packed with characters and bright antics, but with little to no emotional weight. The chase sequences are excitingly captured (especially one long aerial escape over the desert, breathlessly bounding from plane to plane to floating boxes), but the viewer never feels particularly invested in these characters or their mission.

There’s so little special about "Penguins" to make it memorable or to help it stand out as something more than a standard Dreamworks animated movie, with its typical smirking, self-referential, cocked eyebrow sense of humor.

Not that there’s anything horribly or offensively wrong with the standard Dreamworks animated movie. I laughed. I enjoyed its bouncy, goofy charisma. I also instantly started forgetting it before I even got out of my chair. It’s fun; kids will laugh, and parents won't hate themselves. But 2014 has already had animated movies like "Big Hero 6," "The Lego Movie," "The Boxtrolls" and "How to Train Your Dragon 2" – kids’ films with robust visuals, characters, stories and ideas to go along with their robust laughs.

After feasts like those, it’s hard to be entirely satisfied with the cinematic equivalent of puffed corn and powdered cheese.