The Three Musketeers (2004)

He'll make a musketeer yet!

I first watched this very clever little film as a child...and then I watched it again and again and again. After some twenty years without it, I saw it again for the first time a couple of days ago. All of the excitement that I felt when I watched it as a child was rekindled -- and now, as an adult, I can enjoy the wonderful and sometimes wicked humour too.

Don't be turned away by the animation; this film is full of funny asides, plenty of good-natured parody, and some dialog that will go right over the heads of most children. But both kids and adults will enjoy the musketeers' adventures as they race to save the Queen from disaster at the hands of the plotting Cardinal.

I found the animated backgrounds to be very detailed and handled with care -- the animators even bothered to illustrate paintings hanging in the palace. The main characters are drawn to accentuate their personalities, making them easy for kids to remember. And the music is well-chosen, in my opinion, with musical themes for each character and for certain types of action or romance. The romantic theme, for example, is a lovely mix of guitar, strings, and harpsichord. The sword-fighting music resembles a Russian dance, and if you watch the film you'll see why.

The story has been simplified from the novel, with the musketeers' servants being left out, though it seems d'Artagnan's servant has been replaced with a friendly owl. Usually I'm a book snob and purist, but the changes in this film don't bother me at all. I highly recommend this very fun version of Dumas' robust and ribald story. September 8, 2006

Not Good

Animation is a lot of work. If you're not up to it (as the creators of this cartoon) you can just pan the camera around static pictures and make minimal bits of the scene change when absolutely necessary. And if you do go to all that effort to draw a few cels, doggone it, you're going to loop them for all they're worth. The colors also seem washed out -- nothing like the vibrant picture on the box. The picture quality and sound are poorer than what you'd expect from VHS, let alone DVD. The music seemed irrelevant.

But all this I could easily forgive if it told the story well. Unfortunately, the pacing is horrible, the plot is obscure unless you already know the story, and it is devoid of any real emotion -- either from the characters or the viewer. Wait until your kids are older and give them the book instead. October 19, 2000

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