The Three Musketeers (Unfortunately, the one they did in 3D)

The Three Musketeers (2011)

24% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 90 reviews)

Runtime: 110 minutes

Directed by: Paul Writes Shitty Anderson... excuse me for the joke I stole... it's actually Paul W.S. Anderson

Starring: Matthew McFayden, Logan Lerman, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Milla Jovovich, Christoph Waltz

From: Summit Entertainment

Yep, this is one of those times when I watch a movie I expect to be pretty crappy but I do so anyway, whether to laugh at it, to appreciate the actual good films, or other reasons. This was on a Showtime HD channel last night so I figured I should check it out even though I hate the director and just about all the movies he's involved with as they tend to be pretty awful; one of these days I should rewatch Alien vs. Predator to talk about the travesty that was. 

I imagine that many of you know the basics of the Alexandre Dumas story whether it be watching one of the other film adaptations or just reading the original story. It doesn't really matter here as this movie pretty much wipes its ass with the original story. To copy the plot description from the IMDb: “The hot-headed young D'Artagnan along with three former legendary but now down on their luck Musketeers must unite and defeat a beautiful double agent and her villainous employer from seizing the French throne and engulfing Europe in war.” Somehow, such things as Da Vinci's crypt (to steal airship blueprints!) and devices in the early 17th century that can shoot out huge swaths of fire and flame are involved.

Really, to steal an opinion, it seems like the director was more focused on his wife Jovovich than developing the title characters and making them heroes you want to root for. What you get is a pretty crappy movie where you don't care about the totally nonsensical insulting to your intelligence plot (the airship that the bad guys end up building has a heavy anchor; I wish I was joking), stuff happens for no reason at all and it seems to get stupider as it goes along. I don't know why there's a fat guy that tags along with the Musketeers but he does. 

Now, I don't always hate really stupid movies; however, it really depends on what kind of movie it is and how the dumbness relates to the plot. Here, I found it unbearable and when there's also humor that rarely is funny and the action scenes are nothing to write home about... you should really stick to the other adaptations of Dumas' classic novel; there's plenty to choose from. There's even the goofy but fun '93 movie starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Chris O'Donnell. I haven't seen that in years but I much rather would have seen that again than watch this and engage in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I do admit that the scenery was nice (it was filmed in Germany and there are some ornate sets), Waltz had a great head of hair and I have to laugh that one of the minor characters (his name really isn't important) was dressed and looked like what I'll describe as “a gay cowboy pimp from the 1970's (I don't mean to be offensive; that really is the best way to describe the appearance) but this ended up being a waste of an estimated 75 million dollar budget. I know that there are more egregious wastes of money when it comes to worthless movies and people should never have any expectations for a movie where Orlando Bloom is the main villain, but still... I hope that the established actors in this got paid pretty well.

I'll be back Saturday night.