The Three Musketeers Review

Summer is ending and the blockbuster season is coming to a close. As the sun tries mostly in vain to shine on our otherwise soggy island, Paul W.S. Anderson appears on the horizon, his goal being to bring forth the last hurrah of summer with a big budget family adventure film that the studios clearly didn’t think had what it took to tumble with the big releases that came out on a weekly basis from May to August.

The Three Musketeers loosely takes its plot from the original Dumas novel – D’Artagnan, a young bloke, decides he wants to join the legendary Musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis, so tracks down the semi-retired trio in Paris and goes off adventuring with them. The plot involves stolen diamonds, evil cardinals, swarthy English lords, buxom wenches, etc, etc, etc.

The film is ridiculously rubbish, totally inane, embarrassingly poor, baggier than Madness’s roomiest pair of strides and actually really rather watchable. Musketeers has an awareness of its own stupidity and its actors all mug along gamely. It may be very bad, but it’s never offensively so. Instead, it seems happy enough to raise the stakes of its own stupidity as it continues. A seventeenth century scuba diver in Venice? Why not? A son who speaks with a Californian drawl as his father talks with a ‘nu Joisey’ accent (whilst both are playing French men)? Sure! Milla Jovovich abseiling down a wall in a corset? Got it. Airships armed with machine guns that battle over the French countryside? Check. Sword fighting on the roof of Notre Dame cathedral whilst lightning flashes in the sky? Oh go on. There are moments stolen from almost any family adventure film you’d care to mention, from Indiana Jonesto National Treasure, giving it a very by the numbers feel, but nothing you can’t live with.

Anderson has assembled a cast comprised largely actors who ply their trade in second or third tier roles, which has the effect of everyone in it seeming somewhat familiar, but you’re not really sure where from. There’s Matthew Mcfayden, Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans as the Musketeers and Mads Mikkelsen, Juno Temple and Orlando Bloom (among others) bulking out the cast. Percy Jackson himself, Logan Lerman plays our hero D’Artagnan and unsuccessfully vies for the title of most annoying cast member with James bloody Corden (but it’s a telling sign that even his awful presence doesn’t ruin the movie). And then from nowhere, just when you thought he only did proper films these days, Christoph Waltz shows up doing his charming villain shtick. It’s all rather odd.

Despite its admirable commitment to ropiness and cliché, The Three Musketeers is actually pretty challenging not to enjoy at least a little bit (I tried really hard not to, honest I did). I liked the steampunk aspects – the airships, despite their utter stupidity, are pretty great and are fantastic in the battle sequences. The action scenes are clear, concise and well done and plenty of the cast are likable enough to carry the film.

It’s definitely for the kids and I wouldn’t advocate parting with cash to see it, but if and when The Three Musketeers is on some digital catch-up channel on a dull Tuesday evening, you could do a lot worse; (brace yourselves for weakest and most tenuous pun ever) E4 + 1 and one for all!