Review: The Three Musketeers

daniel cohen reviews the latest version of the swashbuckling classic …

Plot: Set in 17th Century France, where Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) tries to obtain power over the young King Louis XIII (Freddie Fox) by starting a war with Great Britain. The young D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) travels to Paris to convince the legendary Three Musketeers to come out of retirement and prevent war.

The Three Musketeers …. more like the Three Mus-crap-teers. Yeah, that’s right. This film was so bad that it inspired me to come up with terrible puns. Oh man, this was rough. You want to go see a boring, uninspired, cookie-cutter movie? Then The Three Musketeers is for you! This film is the definition of Hollywood just crapping out another known property and trying to make a quick buck. Let’s explore all the different ways this movie pissed me off.

It begins with the acting … just horrible. The main guy, D’Artagnan, is nothing more than a little punk. Logan Lerman looks like a JV Michael Cera who does nothing but go around challenging people to fights. I hate him. He’s kind of the unofficial Musketeer, I guess. Speaking of the Musketeers, for a movie called The Three Musketeers, you don’t even see them that much. They really aren’t in that many scenes. They also barely have personalities. I guess Porthos (Ray Stevenson)is supposed to be the funny one, but I didn’t hear anyone laughing.

The other performances are just a vortex of overacting and horribly delivered dialogue. The comedic moments are jaw-dropping. Every ‘funny’ line is telegraphed. The truly terrible jokes stem from the servant Planchet (James Corden) who the Musketeers treat like shit and who also coincidentally gets shit on by birds, so there you go. Then there’s the young King Louis XIII (Freddie Fox) who has a lame long running joke about what he wears. There was one scene where he complains about the color of his robes that made absolutely no sense. I could feel the audience’s confusion in the air. Once again … there were no chuckles.

Out of all the poor performances, though, I daresay Orlando Bloom as the Duke of Buckingham is Razzie-worthy. He just looks uncomfortable and has no confidence whatsoever in what he’s doing. There’s zero charisma, and he just has these weird facial ticks. Bloom was a complete train wreck, and he’s not even in it that much.

The two actors who come out unscathed are Christoph Waltz (Cardinal Richelieu) and Milla Jovovich (Milady). What is Waltz doing here? Come on, man. You’re better than this. Jovovich manages to take a very cliché character and at least have some fun with it. And there is one really good scene late in the movie between her and the lead Musketeer, Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), that’s kind of this intense stand-off. There are elements to her character that pissed me off though. She’s kind of like a lame Batman. She uses all these gadgets that simply don’t work in this time period. It just looks stupid. And the film is really lazy with some of her action moments. There’s a part early in the movie where she runs through all these cannons. She doesn’t do anything special. She just moves her head from side to side a little bit and then slides. Yay.

And that’s another big problem I have with this film: it’s lazy. There’s a scene where the Musketeers are surrounded, and you’re really curious to see how they escape. But all they do is run out of their house and get away. That was it? Did I miss something?

Now maybe you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Hey, there’s got to be some solid action at least, right?’ Nope. I wasn’t impressed with any of the action whatsoever. They even use The Matrix ‘stop and go’ (bullet time) fighting style at times. The Matrix!! Really?! Because we’ve never seen that before! You got to be kidding me! THE MATRIX!! A film that came out more than 12 years ago! Holy Challah Bread, cut me a break!

Oh yeah, and during the climax, there’s lightning in the background during a sword fight that takes place on a tight ledge. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Let’s not forget the terrible special effects. Everything looked faked. The settings, the dumb air blimps, it all looked animated…lame.

What’s even more unbearable is the slow pace. It’s not bad enough I have to suffer through a sub-par movie, but I have to do it slowly as well? The plot doesn’t even get started until about forty-five minutes in. It’s also slowed down by the painful love story between D’Artagnan and Constance (Gabriella Wilde), which is just another terribly over acted performance in the film.

But I’ve saved the worst part for last. I’m really getting tired of movies thinking they are going to have sequels. Yup. The end doesn’t just open the door open for a sequel, it flat out leaves unresolved conflicts. I hate this crap. Just make a stand alone movie! How many times have we seen this? A movie that promises a sequel, but we know it will never happen. We even had two earlier this year with Priest and I Am Number Four.

I’m not that familiar with the Three Musketeers, but if you got three great actors together with strong chemistry, it could have potential. But this is boring, slow, lazy, underdeveloped, and has endless humor resulting in poop and pratfalls. The movie stinks…the end.

Rating: 3 out of 10 (Really Atrocious)