Young, handsome and ambitious D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) leaves his small town for Paris, desperate to become one of the famous Musketeers, protectors of the king. Upon arrival, he finds himself in no end of trouble, offending all three of his heroes and incurring the wrath of Rochefort (Mads Mikkelson), leader of the Cardinal’s personal guard.
When it emerges that a plot to split up the king and queen can be foiled by retreaving the queen’s necklace, D’Artagnan joins Porthos, Athos and Aramis (Ray Stevenson, Matthew MacFadyen and Luke Evans) to hunt down English villain the Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) and his co-conspirator Milady de Winter (Mila Jovovich). Things get complicated, however, when the foursome realise the man at the centre of the plot is someone very close to the king- the power-crazed cardinal himself (Christoph Waltz).
The hideous dialogue, the silly twists, the insistence on cramming a bad joke in every 30 seconds… there are many, many reasons why The Three Musketeers is a bad movie. Pitching the period setting as if it was a French version of Wild, Wild, West (the hideous airship battles being their equivalent of Kenneth Branagh’s mechanical spider) and dressing it up as ‘Steampunk influenced’, Anderson blows everything up with wild abandon, forgetting to create any characters that you don’t want to see skewered by a musket. The relationships are summed up by a series of lustful looks (particularly D’Artagnan’s love interest, who can do nothing but gasp and look intrigued by the elfin hero), and the main emotional angle (Milady’s betrayal of Aramis) is nonsensical and poorly handled.
Usually stars have very little recourse in a movie like his, simply thinking of the pay cheque and doing their best with what they’ve got. Here, however, the performances are as bad as everything else. Lerman mistakes arrogance for confidence, making a central character so smug you almost cheer when he is wounded early on. He also looks positively pre-pubescent, and ridiculous when squared up to his enemies. Matthew MacFadyen plays the tortured and heart-broken Aramis, who falls at the first hurdle by having no chemistry with Jovovich (who plays her Resident Evil role, simply in a big dress). The most shocking perhaps is Bloom- where do we begin? The bizarre hair and beard? The ‘Keyser Soze’ gravelly voice? Was this guy really in Lord of The Rings? The few saving graces are perhaps Waltz, who still manages a degree of menace, and Evans, the one Musketeer who seemed to give some thought to his character.
An incomparable mess, made by a director who clearly thinks just throwing action, 3D and Jovovich into one awful mix makes a movie. It does not.
The Three Musketeers is in cinemas on Ocotober 14.
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