The education of my daughters continues, with my girls giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to the highlights and lowlights of 90’s movies. This week’s entry? 1993’s The Three Musketeers, adapted from the original novel by Alexandre Dumas.
For those new to the story, the Three Musketeers follows the adventures of young D’Artagnan, who aspires to join the personal guard of the French King, only to find that they have been disbanded by the villainous Cardinal Richelieu and his suave henchman Rochefort. D’Artagnan falls in with our three swashbuckling Musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, to thwart the treasonous cardinal’s plan to snatch the throne.
I think everyone remembers just how effectively the actors hammed up their roles. Keifer Sutherland is perfect as the dutiful but haunted Athos, and Oliver Platt’s piratical Porthos is an absolute joy. I don’t know which madman pitched Hollywood bad boy Charlie Sheen as the saintly Aramis, but somehow he makes it work. Michael Wincott is in his element as the growly, black-clad Rochefort, but Tim Curry steals the show as the pantomime villain of a cardinal, grinning his way through murders, treason and the attempted seduction of the young French queen. Rewatching this after more than 30 years, it struck me that for all the joyful banter between heroes and evil-doers, there’s very little “empty calorie” dialogue in this film. Every little quip and joke still serves to either advance the plot or reveal the character relationships.
What also struck me about this film was how much I’ve missed physical sets. Most of this film takes advantage of wide open spaces to tell D’Artagnan’s story, switching through fields, ruins, cliffs and castles. As a result, the film overflows with colours, shadows and textures, and allows for a fantastic array of camera shots. I didn’t realise how tired I’d become with the standard CGI “front and centre” camera shot that’s all about the upper body and face until I watched Chris O’Donnell duelling the cardinal’s soldiers atop a crumbling battlement, the thrust and counter-thrust of the figures outlined against the sky.
As for my girls? They loved it, gasping over the swordfights and yelling at the screen every time Tim Curry hammed it up as Richelieu. Afterwards, they told me they liked how much fun the actors were obviously having with their roles, which might be part of why they enjoyed Sonic 3 so much.
Let me know your thoughts, and if you have another classic 80s or 90s film for my girls to watch, please leave a comment below!
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