Good Movie. Disgusting Candy Bar..."The Three Musketeers"

Welcome to the 423rd retelling of the Dumas classic...

Give or take.

The Story:

The classic tale of Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and Aramis (Luke Evans) meeting d'Artagnan (Logan Lerman) and rallying together to fight the evil forces of Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Walz) has been filmed a few times and is well known by now.  

 

What could possibly be added that wasn't there before?

Flying airships?

Sold!!

So really, Dumas' classic gets skewered and changed around haphazardly with every iteration so that each of the characters often ends up doing something that their counterpart actually did... blah blah blah... you get the idea.  Regardless of the telling, the 4 end up fighting together and saving the day, that part normally remains intact.

Filling out the star-studded cast is Milady (Milla Jovovich) and the Duke (Orlando Bloom) among others.

The costumes, set designs and action sequences make it a period piece with a sense of action and adventure instead of a rigid history lesson designed to lull you to sleep.

How well does it stack up against the rest of the filmed versions?  Again, this will be entirely dependent on your love of flying airships.  :)  Or, your enjoyment of the story, or the other versions that have been filmed.  Until this point, the only other version I've endured more than once has been the Disney version with Sheen, Sutherland, O'Donnell and Platt.

A key part of the film centers around DaVinci's blueprint for a flying ship, equipped with cannons galore.  While highly improbable, it does make for a fun final act of the film.

I watched this one, it kept me entertained, that's good enough for me.

Final Grade: B

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: If it played again, I could certainly watch it.  Don't know that I'll rush out to buy it though.