Deborah Ross

Zilch to care about

issue 15 October 2011

So, The Three Musketeers, and one for all, and all for one, but I wish it were every man for himself, and they’d all decided to call it a day and go their separate ways. This is a film of no charm whatsoever and I’d advise you to steer clear, walk the other way, keep your money in your pocket, and do something else. Do your VAT return or change all the duvet covers or scour the grill pan that’s been ‘soaking’ for days and I promise you, not only will you have more fun, but one hour and 50 minutes will pass much more quickly, too.

This is expensively and showily mounted, but adds up to no more than a tedious recycling of tedious action-stunts, and comes with a script which contains lines like ‘at least she died as she lived, on her own terms’, although, thinking about it now, that’s fair enough, as dying on someone else’s terms could be mightily inconvenient particularly, I suppose, if you had plans for the evening, and had even bought the theatre tickets. I can see that now.

I am not proprietorial about the Alexandre Dumas tale, which was first published in 1844. I did not read it as a child. It may even be parked in my ‘Not Very Interested’ drawer. Still, I have bumped into several of the umpteen screen adaptations over the years, as everyone has, and so the question must be asked: is there a compelling need for yet another version? Might all the others have missed something? Yes, apparently so. What? What? Go on, guess, although I will have to hurry you along as I don’t want to waste yet more time on this film, and I have grill pans to scour.

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