The Three Musketeers - review

One Direction on the set of their new video

The Three Musketeers, or The Three-D Musketeers as I call it, is the latest film from Paul WS Anderson, the "visionary" director of such cinematic milestones (or should that be millstones) as AvP and Soldier.
Like Resident Evil: Afterlife before it and a fact Anderson likes to shout about in the trailers, Musketeers is "shot in glorious 3D" not post-converted.  It is surprisingly non-gimmicky with only a few shots of swords pointing out of the screen yet in spite of this, it still managed to give me a headache after it finished (it didn't help that the first 5 minutes were screened in bright flickering pink, causing me to go off searching for the most of elusive of characters - the multiplex projectionist).
I think it would be fair to say that the screenplay would qualify as being called "based on" Dumas's novel.  I don't think there were giant hot air balloon war ships in the Ollie Reid version.
Anderson has made changes/additions to the story because he thinks they look cool, like an overuse of slow-mo that could rival Zack Synder, but they make for some plot holes which are even more logic-defying and dumb than the other recent turkey Abduction.
For example, Mi'Lady de Winter breaks into the Queen's chambers to steal a necklace and finds her path blocked by a maze of invisible razor wire that she must dance her way through.  I can understand that it is a detterent to thieves but how is the Queen meant to get to her jewellry on a day to day basis?  Impossible!
Then there is the question of how the Musketeers are able to reverse their airship out of the other airship they have crashed into on the top of Notre Dame cathedral?
I would be slightly more forgiving of things like this if the film had been fun but the only comedy was supposed to come from James Corden's servant character Planchet and most of that fell flat.  The rest of the characters were too po-faced.  Out of the musketeers, only Matthew Macfayden's Athos gets anything close to a back story and character arc, and Logan Lerman's d'Artagnan is a really annoying and cocky little runt.  Only Orlando Bloom seemed to enjoying himself, camping it up as the Duke of Buckingham.
The only decent sword fight comes near the beginning where the four musketeers take on the Cardinal's guards, and nothing that follows can match this for entertainment which is an inexcusable crime in an action blockbuster (see also Superman Returns when Supes saves the plane).  The action was so tame I actually spent a lot of time wondering why the so-called musketeers spent so much time using swords and not muskets?
One last thing... was it just me or was Anderson trying to showhorn in references to The Princess Bride by having a horse called Buttercup and Athos riffing on the "anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something line"?  Just me?

1 star

The Lion King 3D - review

Normally I try to avoid going to the cinema when it is full of a) annoying teenagers and b) screaming kids, (hence why I like going to The Belmont!) but it was always going to be a near impossibility when going to watch a Disney film on a Saturday afternoon at the local multiplex!

Luckily when the film you are watching is as good as The Lion King, you can (nearly) put young children singing or kicking the back of your seat to the back of your mind for 90 minutes and enjoy an animated classic on the big screen.
Bamlet TM (Bambi meets Hamlet) was one of the last great classic animated films before the dawn of the Pixar age and Disney resorted to churning out straight to video sequels.
It has everything that makes Disney films such perfect family entertainment.  Compelling story, colourful and memorable characters, a few jokes for the adults and some classic songs.  Lion King would arguably have the best soundtrack of any Disney film and while the kids were singing along all the time, I could see a few adults (myself included) trying to stop themselves joining in to Circle Of Life or Hakuna Matata.  Personally though, my favourite song in the film is Be Prepared.  I love a good villain and Jeremy Irons does a snarlingly good job as Scar.
However since everyone is pretty much aware of how great the film is, the purpose of yesterdays visit was to evaluate the 3D conversion.  And the verdict?  If the opening Circle Of Life sequence is anything to go by, I wouldn't bang the final nail into the 3D coffin just yet.  It showed how 3D can be used effectively to create depth and gravitas without having to resort to cheap tricks and didn't cause the usual headaches that 3D can sometimes bring when done poorly.
Back to the age-old argument though.  Did having 3D improve the film?  No... but it certainly didn't spoil it either and that is a vast improvement on some of the conversions I have seen in the last couple of years.
I am interested in reading Charles Gant's weekly UK box office round-up on Tuesday to see how well the re-release does this weekend - it topped the US box office a couple of weeks ago.
It could lead to studios claiming that 3D isn't dead and rushing to convert their entire back catalogue into 3D.  Disney are already in the process of doing this in fact.
But I feel that it's success lies in a much simpler answer.  People just want to watch good films.  With Hollywood seemingly content on churning out an endless series of sequels, remakes, reboots, comic book movies, etc, is it any wonder that people are embracing the chance to see a really good film on the big screen, even if that film was made 15-20 years ago?
Last year Universal re-released new digital prints of Psycho and Back To The Future.  This year we get Jurassic Park, The Lion King, Ghostbusters and Amelie back on the big screen, and in 2012 Titanic is re-released in 3D.
Similar to the "golden age" thinking that the main character in Midnight In Paris suffers from (see my review), perhaps modern audiences are so disheartened with the current state of Hollywood that they are nostalgic for the past when cinema was great.
It is something to think about... but that doesn't mean that studios should look to re-release EVERYTHING they have ever made, that might be a spot of overkill!

4 stars