By: Neil Smith
Swashbuckling swordplay meets improbable airships in the latest take on the much-loved Alexandre Dumas novel.
What's the story?
Young buck D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman) journeys to Paris in the hope of joining the fabled Musketeers and is swiftly caught up in a conspiracy to dethrone France's naïve new king.
What did we think?
What starts off as a camp and lively caper quickly degenerates into a supremely stupid action movie that is closer to Pirates of the Caribbean than its revered source material. Every generation deserves its own version of this durable old favourite. What has this generation done to deserve this one?
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With a CV built on sci-fi horror films like Event Horizon and the Resident Evil series, Geordie helmer Paul W S Anderson might not seem an obvious choice to direct a new 3D adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's 19th Century classic. Perhaps that's why he opts to make something else entirely: a preposterous, bloated spectacular aimed squarely at the Pirates crowd.
You only have to look at the film's biggest departure from the original - vast airborne galleons that do climactic battle above the spires of Notre Dame - to spot this is more Dumb-Ass than Dumas. But then what else should you expect from a flick that makes Milla Jovovich's Milady a butt-kicking merc with a climbing harness in her corset, or one that commences with a raid on the secret vault Da Vinci apparently built beneath Venice when he wasn't painting the Mona Lisa?
The Three Musketeers is at its best when it sticks closest to the text - D'Artagnan's initial encounters with the titular trio, for example, or intrigue relating to a necklace stolen from Juno Temple's delightful French queen. These moments are so few and far between, though, it makes Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds look slavishly reverential by comparison.
Verdict: All this and James Corden too as a slobby servant. Sheesh.
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