Review of The Three Musketeers (2011) by Anssi V — 02 Dec 2012

Entertaining enough for one watch, but a pretty bad movie. Where to begin? Everyone pretty much except Ray Stevenson as Porthos is either miscast or badly cast; Waltz is either miscast or phoning it in because he knows the quality of movie he's in, D'Artagnan is generic as hell with no type of charisma, Athos the same, Aramis seems to think he's in an Assassin's Creed movie, the director is too in love with his hot wife to cast someone who can act (not that I can blame him) - Jovovich is pretty terrible in several instances, the queen is also bad (in one scene she's crying and abruptly turns it off badly), and D'Artagnan's love interest doesn't ever look for a moment like she's from any time other than the 21st century.

And is it bad when I don't even buy Orlando Bloom as an Englishman? The script is a mess, everything is pretty uninspired, and the Jack Black wannabe comedy relief is thrown in randomly. The ending is also a cop out, the Musketeers could have easily taken out Richlieu, but, oh wait, sequels and stuff (man I hope not).

The direction was pretty terrible; again Paul W. S. Anderson (who will never be confused with Paul Thmas Anderson) was too much in love with his hot wife and bad slow-mo techniques. Stick to the bad video game movies, Paul, everyone expects those to suck anyways, so you're not letting anyone down, but when you try to take on a decent property, well, people expect things of you.

Better to not let anyone get any expectations up for a Three Musketeers film when you're directing it.