Wednesday, October 19, 2011

THE THREE MUSKETEERS - REVIEW

Matthew Macfadyen does swashbuckling: Three Musketeers
10/19/2011



Popcorn movie time, a welcome chance to disengage brain and just enjoy the ride. And the Three Musketeers fitted the bill perfectly. OK so all the money has been spent on the sets, costumes, action and effects rather than the script but it's an engaging spectacle and lots of fun.

Milla Jovovich plays an Irene Adler type character, a sassy lady who can handle herself and double crosses lover and Musketeer Athos (Matthew Macfadyen) on their last mission. The story then follows wannabe Musketeer D'Artangnan (Logan Lerman) who is precocious, hot-headed and extremely cocky but finds his heroes have thrown in the towel on saving the day and general swashbuckling activities.

With Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) conspiring to seize the French thrown from its young King (Freddie Fox) and D'Artangnan eager to impress the Queen's maid on whom he has a major crush, forces soon conspire to kick the Musketeers back into action.

Orlando Bloom plays a be-quiffed English aristocrat and bad-guy and is quite good, channelling Rik Mayall's Lord Flashheart of Blackadder fame. Lerman does a convincing job as the newest recruit, although his American accent seems out of place. When you are playing such a cocky character it would be easy (for me anyway) to be secretly wishing the baddies would take him out but he won me over.

Waltz is naturally superb as baddie Richelieu, as is Mad Mikklesen as the leader of his guard but Macfadyen was the draw for me. Love the MacF and it was nice beyond words to see him playing an action hero. OK so most of the action is reserved for Lerman but he does a good line in buckle-swashing when he gets the chance.

All round good entertainment and they've left it open for a sequel so if it takes anything at the box office I'm sure they will be making another.

I'm going to give it 70%. On IMDb it's got a critics rating of 59% with not Metacritic rating yet (it's released in the US this weekend) while on Rotten Tomatoes UK it doesn't have a critics consensus yet but has an audience rating of 59%

FILM.REVSTAN.COM

2 comments:

musicchick48 said...

great review!!1 and she gets it! it's a popcorn flick! but she misspelled throne! gah! why does that matter to me? i. do. not. know.

NelsonStJames said...

I remember when popcorn flicks were good and somewhat intelligent. In fact I still fondly remember many of those films today as they did not insult my intelligence.