Disney's version of `The Three Musketeers' was made like lightning in order to undercut some other studio's version - or perhaps to prevent some other studio from undercutting Disney, I'm not sure which. In either case it shows signs of haste. There's none of your intricate, dazzlingly inventive swordplay or action sequences; there's lots of competently executed, run-of-the-mill, whatever-works-simplest stuff instead. Characters consist of their costumes and little more. There's el-lame-o dialogue. Anything that separates `The Three Musketeers' - the work by Dumas, that is - from any other swashbuckler, has been ruthlessly excised.
I found myself liking it all the same. The fact that I liked it is a fact about ME, and not the film, which is not, I'll admit, very good. But there is one fact about the film I'd like to draw everyone's attention to. The musketeers clearly think morality is something very important, but their concrete notions of right and wrong are decidedly odd. In fact they're downright primitive: like Aristotlean physics, only sillier. There is so little common ground between the code of honour of the musketeer and our own code that we throw up our hands in despair; we don't even bother to adopt the musketeer's code as our own for the purposes of the fiction; and yet, somehow, our sympathy is always with the musketeer.
I shouldn't say `somehow'. This strange feeling of sympathy is something to write home about when one encounters it in the novel, whereas in the film we have a villain - a cardinal, no less, and who likes cardinals - who all but has horns and a tail. Still, SOME feeling of forlorn bloodlust carries over from the book, to give a tint to what would otherwise be a very colourless film.
I found myself liking it all the same. The fact that I liked it is a fact about ME, and not the film, which is not, I'll admit, very good. But there is one fact about the film I'd like to draw everyone's attention to. The musketeers clearly think morality is something very important, but their concrete notions of right and wrong are decidedly odd. In fact they're downright primitive: like Aristotlean physics, only sillier. There is so little common ground between the code of honour of the musketeer and our own code that we throw up our hands in despair; we don't even bother to adopt the musketeer's code as our own for the purposes of the fiction; and yet, somehow, our sympathy is always with the musketeer.
I shouldn't say `somehow'. This strange feeling of sympathy is something to write home about when one encounters it in the novel, whereas in the film we have a villain - a cardinal, no less, and who likes cardinals - who all but has horns and a tail. Still, SOME feeling of forlorn bloodlust carries over from the book, to give a tint to what would otherwise be a very colourless film.