The Three Musketeers in 3D

This film was always only going to succeed if it was bad enough to be enjoyable. Luckily it was, though not bad enough to be a riot or something I’d ever watch again.

It was without doubt the worst adaptation of Dumas I’ve ever seen, or am ever likely to see again. All it had going for it were some lovely visual flights-of-fancy and decent, if largely unnecessary, 3D. What’s amazing about it is how it took well-loved characters known to generations and made them so incredibly unlikeable. In just a few opening scenes, they made Athos look like an easily-led, careless braggart, Porthos an abusive poseur and Aramis a stupid praying Batman parody. And this is before their fall from grace and disillusionment. All three of them let the hidden treasures and inventions of Da Vinci get completely destroyed without comment, and abuse their servant Planchet in a strained, cruel way. Planchet himself was played by James Corden in a horribly forced quasi-Ricky Gervais way, gets no laughs and generally shouldn’t be in the film.

As for D’Artagnan himself, played my unevenly pretty-faced Logan Lerman, who I can’t remember at all from Percy Jackson. He is so detestable that I hope I never have to see him in this sort of property again. His story retains the essence of the book’s story – on the way to become a musketeer, D’Artagnan gets into a scrap with Rochefort, and then in Paris ends up offending all the Three Musketeers in turn and has to duel them all, only to end up their companion when Richelieu’s men try to arrest them. But where it seems like charming impetuousness and bad luck in most adaptations, here D’Artagnan is just a horrible arrogant little twit who brings all the trouble upon himself. And a prick towards women.

The plot then pretty wildly veers from the source, albeit still revolving around retrieving a necklace from Buckingham (Orlando Bloom in Great Yarmouth pantomime mode) in London. Only here, not only is the Queen virtuous and innocent and the necklace stolen by Milady in an absurd razorwire/lasers scene, but the bulk of the plot tension comes from steampunk dirigible/warship hybrids flying about firing at one another’s decks (rather than, y’know, just shooting up at the airbags and putting a swift end to the battle).

There isn’t a single likeable character here, and you can barely say there’s a female character at all, so two-dimensional are they all, and it’s quite strange but true that the most sympathetic character in the piece is the useless comic relief King Louis XIII.