The Three Musketeers

This week, Evan and I went to see The Three (D) Musketeers. The D isn't in the actual title, but Paul W.S. Anderson liked filming Resident Evil: Afterlife in 3D so much he decided to make this one with an added dimension as well. Which seems to make him about 6 months behind the times. If you take a look at the amount of 3D movies we've seen in the past three months versus the amount of 3D movies we've seen in the past year, things have tailed off. Right at the beginning of summer, there was Thor, Priest, Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, and Harry Potter. Then a wait until Conan the Barbarian. Then this.

Anyhow, we paid the extra money and went. We got to the theatre during the preview for Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. Evan got the next preview, and I got The Hunger Games after Evan kept saying things about it, but couldn't remember the name. Then there was a preview for John Carter (looks interesting) and Immortals (looks fun).

The movie starts with three company logos (about normal), and then a flyover of a model of Renaissance Europe, settling on Venice, where we're introduced to our heroes. Athos kills a guard from underwater, then pops out and kills 4 more that rush in. He's met with a gun and a kiss by Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich, married to the director). She's stolen a key from a priest of some sort.

Next, Aramis does his best Ezio impression (if dressed in black) by leaping off a bridge onto a boat (it is Venice, after all), knocking nearly everyone overboard, and taking a second key.

Porthos is introduced in chains. A high muckety-muck comes in to question him, at which point Porthos break free, subdues all the guards, and takes the third key from the muckety-muck.

They all meet together in very nice building, and put the three keys into slots to open the fabled Vault of Da Vinci (Sure, why not). Milady avoids the traps at the entrance and leads the rest of them into a room with a bunch of schematics. They find the one they want, flood the rest of the room to escape the guards that have discovered them, and escape. However, during the celebration, Milady betrays them, leaving them poisoned and paralyzed on the floor while she makes off with the Duke of Buckingham (a very hammy Orlando Bloom. Seriously, saying he's a ham is like saying the ocean is wet, or outer space is big. Sure, it's true, but it doesn't quite convey the proper sense of scale).

A year later, and we meet our final and youngest hero, D'Artagnon. He's finishing up a fencing lesson with his father. Dear old Dad used to be a Musketeer, so he's training his son to be one as well. Pleased with the results, he sends D'Artagnon to Paris to join his old squad.

All is not well, however. He manages to pick a fight with Rochefort, who's quite evil and not at all honourable when it comes to duels. He shoots D'Artagnon instead of fighting sword-to-sword, and the lad is only saved when Miladypasses by and commands Rochefort to spare his life.

In Paris, D'Artagnon sees Rochefort and chases after him, determined to fight on the fields of honour (or something like that). During the chase, he manages to insult or offend each of the three (ex-)Musketeers, and arranges to duel them all in the same place consecutively. Before they can get to that, their surrounded by the Cardinal's guard, led by Rochefort and lieutenant-ed by Cagliostro. Seeing his chance to get at Rochefort, D'Artagnon begins fighting the guards, and the rest of the Musketeers join in.

They win (it's 4 on 40. "An off day") but are summoned to the royal palace for "punishment" where the king is impressed at their moxie and buys them clothes (the king's a mix between a dufus and a metrosexual). Anyway, they also meet the Cardinal, and the plot kicks off from there. The Cardinal wants to take over France, so he engineers a war, and it's those machinations that the Musketeers have to stop. Along with D'Artagnon's love interest (of course), a handmaiden to the Queen whom he clumsily and awkwardly hits on. Repeatedly. It works. I'm pretty sure I'd get laughed out of the room if I tried those lines, but then again, I don't look like Logan Lerman.

This movie is what Tyler might call a Trope-nado. And not the good tropes either. The bad tropes. No one's really big on subtlety, so if there's any chance the audience might miss something the characters are emoting, they'll say it anyway (I'm looking at you, Athos).

The king and Buckingham get into a smarm off that made me laugh and made Evan want to vomit. It's a little silly, but that's not out of place in this movie. The whole thing is a little silly, and you really have to give it the benefit of the doubt or you'll just be watching a bad movie. Like Evan. Me, I was watching a delightfully campy movie, and I thought it was awesome, in a Mortal Kombat type of way (and yes, the director did those, as well as Resident Evil).

I don't really mind the director, except that he really fetishizes his wife, which is kinda uncomfortable. But besides that, I had a lot of fun. I think it's a Blu-ray movie, but I must confess that some of that enjoyment came out of watching the physical reaction it had on Evan. So maybe you should watch it with a critically discerning friend, and watch his brain try to crawl out his ear and escape.