Secondhand Reviews: "The Three Musketeers"

Rated PG-13 for some sexual references and mainly for violence.

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Veteran moviegoers will have long since learned about the difference between "Based On" (which more or less requires the film makers to keep relatively close to the actual facts a true story is based on) or "inspired by" (where they film makers feel a lot more freedom to play fast and loose with the truth). I propose that something like that be instituted with adaptations of books: this movie claims in its credits to be "based on the novel by Alexander Dumas" but really, "inspired by" is a whole lot closer to what it really is. Dumas himself would never have recognized his own book here if they hadn't called them "Musketeers" and kept the original character names.

In this version of the story, the musketeers (along with would-be musketeer Dartagnan) have to travel to England to steal back the queen's jewels, which have been stolen by the treacherous Milady DeWinter, and which, if not returned within a couple of days, could result in a war breaking out between the two nations that could devastate France. The whole thing involves martial arts, slow motion "Matrix" like action sequences, and battles in the air in incredibly high tech zeppelins that have more advanced technology than modern fighter planes... you know, exactly the sort of thing that traditional version of "The Three Musketeers" have always had.

There's no getting around it, so let's not try to evade the issue and get this stated up front: this particular "Three Musketeers" is a serious bad movie. I mean just plain absurd. The film was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, of "Resident Evil" fame, and he reveals himself here to be the absolute definition of a one-trick pony: he seems to be incapable of filming an action or fight sequence that doesn't use that slow-motion "bullet time" style developed in "The Matrix", no matter how utterly inappropriate it may be for the movie. One of the biggest problems with this is that a musketeers movie ought to be filled with REAL sword fighting, REAL leaps and stunts and the like performed by real people, and Anderson turns the whole thing modern-day techno on us. This is particularly jarring in the scene where Milady steals the carefully protected jewels: it's literally like a Tom Cruise scene out of "Mission: Impossible" and verging on unintentionally funny. Yeah, I should mention that... he steals from just about every action movie you could name. Another great film to play "where is THIS scene from" with.

For the most part, the acting is blander than bland, too. Ray Stevenson is not too bad as the moody Porthos, but on the whole the only person in the cast who seems to be enjoying themselves at all and delivering a performance with any enthusiasm is Milla Jovovich as Milady. She takes such obvious delight in both her scheming and her stunt scenes that she's fun to watch. But everybody else is sleepwalking through the film. Orlando Bloom as the British foe the Duke of Buckingham is much closer to this dullard "Pirates Of The Caribbean" character here than his "Lord Of The Rings" role, and the wonderfully evil Christoph Waltz (of "Inglorious Basterds" and "Water For Elephants") dials down his charisma to almost zero playing the sinister Cardinal Richeliu. And as for the musketeers' "Valet", who could very well have been played by Seth Rogen or Jonah Hill straight out of "Superbad", the less said the better.

This is one of those movies where the film makers have the strange notion that scene after scene with technology that wouldn't exist for centuries after the story takes place would be a really cool thing, so we have to endure the "dog fights" between the musketeers and the British forces both in tricked-out zeppelin war machines that make the Death Star look like a kids toy. Even set in the present day these scenes just wouldn't cut it, but in "The Three Musketeers" they're light years beyond being anachronistic, and only made me constantly ask myself "What in the world were they thinking?" (not out loud, of course, although that would have been an improvement on the actual dialogue). There's practically nothing about this movie that works the way the people who made it somehow had the idea that it would.

So, is there a real reason to see "The Three Musketeers"? Not really. There are very few stories that have been done as often, over so many years and countries, as this one, and MOST of the other version have gotten it better. It's not even as if it's been multiple decades or anything since the last "Musketeers" movie... what with the 1993 version, 1998's "The Man In The Iron Mask" in which the Musketeers are prominently featured, and 2001's "The Musketeer", among others, we've had plenty of takes on the Dumas classic in modern times. and this film adds absolutely nothing to those movies or the legacy of the story. If you're a fan of the book, a fan of the earlier films, a fan of action and swordplay, or of any of the actors in it, my advice would be the same... don't bother. (Hmm... I wonder if I've been too subtle here?)