plot : a young french boy sees his parents killed before his eyes by tim roth , oops . . . i
mean , an evil man .
he vows revenge on that man and is taught the ways of the musketeer by some old dude who used to be one himself ?
anyway , fourteen years go by and . . . arrgh , well , you know the rest . . . swish-swish-zzzzzzz !
critique : this is a pretty bad movie .
let’s see , where should i start ?
okay , first of all , the story is just plain boring .
it’s not original , is entirely predictable and lacks energy .
okay , what’s next ?
acting , you say .
hmmmm , well , the main actor , justin chambers , is basically an uncharismatic version of chris o’donnell but with less range ( think about that ! ) , and mena suvari , is just plain off .
not as bad as thora birch was in dungeons & dragons , but entirely miscast , with bad deliveries , awful sequences and a piss-poor accent that comes and goes .
now i’m not sure if this was ms . suvari’s fault or the director’s , but i’ve definitely seen her at a much higher level than in this film .
the only semi-saving grace actor-wise is tim roth as the irrepressible ” bad guy ” , but once again , it’s not something that we haven’t seen before . . . a
thousand times . . . by the same guy ! !
tim , please . . . for the love of god , beg your agent to ask the marketplace for some modern day ” american roles ” for you as a ” nice guy ” in a romantic comedy or something .
stretch , dude . . . stretch ! !
we all know that you can do much better than this gunk .
alright , what else was bad in this film ?
oh yeah , the score !
yikes , how’s about taking it down a few notches there , fellas ?
this thing blares in your ear whenever it feels the need to accentuate a certain scene , but actually does little more than annoy .
i think it’s important for the man behind the music to recognize that this film isn’t a ” real epic ” by any stretch of the imagination .
it’s a fluffy rehashed cake-walk created by some ” shrewd ” studio heads who decided to take advantage of the whole ” kung-fu ” phenomenon in films , and test it out on an old classic .
dudes . . . you
failed all around !
( keep reading )
the editing is also pretty shoddy in this movie , the dialogue banal and stilted and the plot problems . . . plentiful !
( why does the guy on top of the horse carriage just stand there when his opponent takes forever scampering his way back to the top ?
why don’t they just cut the mouseketeer’s rope at the top of the tower , instead of jumping down on their own chords and fighting him while hanging ?
why doesn’t anybody look a day older , when the sequence says ” 14 years later ” ?
( at least . . . change
your shirt , man ! )
keep in mind that i have never strayed away from championing certain movies that are created simply for the sake of a ” fun time ” , but this flick just didn’t cut it for me .
it was boring for stretches , the acting was atrocious at times ( the ” romantic ” scene between suvari and chambers next to the lake reminded me of plays in high school which made you cringe ) , there was little reason to care for anyone and since when were the musketeers fat ?
i will give the movie this much , and that is that its main reason for being ( its ” raison-d’etre ” , as the french would say ) , its fight sequences , do come through despite the lack of their numbers in the film .
i was hoping that the movie would be packed with cool stuntwork as promoted in its trailer , but what you see there , are essentially the snippets from the two major ( and cool ) swashbuckling sequences from the film .
the first comes right at the beginning of the movie , while the other essentially finishes the film off , hanging from the tower and juggling off ladders .
the ladder sequence itself is a definite keeper but unfortunately the rest of the movie is just regurgitated crap .
and can anyone please tell me how catherine deneuve got her name placed at the top of this film’s credits ?
hullo ?
the film is called the musketeer and stars a dude name justin chambers .
deneuve is barely in this movie !
ugh , just another small thing that annoyed me about this trash .
now say it together , gang : ” all for one , and one for all . . . we
vow to stay away from it all ! ! ”
thank me later .
where’s joblo coming from ?
a knight’s tale ( 7/10 ) – american outlaws ( 5/10 ) – crouching tiger , hidden dragon ( 7/10 ) – the matrix ( 8/10 ) – the replacement killers ( 6/10 ) – romeo must die ( 3/10 ) – shanghai noon ( 6/10 )