The Three Musketeers (PG)
AFI Catalog; Disney Movies; Disney Wiki; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Disney+; Google Play; Movies Anywhere; Vudu

Caution: spoilers.

This came out in 1993, and I'm sure I saw it at some point in the 90s. I watched it again in 2023 to write this review. It's based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas, which I'm afraid I've never read. The movie did rather poorly with critics, but I liked it.

Set in 1625 in France, we meet a young swordsman named d'Artagnan (Chris O'Donnell), who is fighting a guy named Girard (Paul McGann, who I completely failed to recognize). Girard is upset about something that happened between his sister and d'Artagnan, though the latter claims "nothing" happened. D'Artagnan wins the fight, but is then chased away by Girard's brothers. Girard and his brothers occasionally pursue d'Artagnan throughout the movie, but they're of no real importance to the story. Anyway, d'Artagnan goes to Paris to become a musketeer, like his late father had been. Unfortunately, before he gets there, the musketeers are disbanded by Captain Rochefort (Michael Wincott), the head of Cardinal Richelieu's guards. However, three of the musketeers refuse to give up their duty of protecting King Louis. They are Athos (Kiefer Sutherland), Aramis (Charlie Sheen), and Porthos (Oliver Platt). So Richelieu (Tim Curry) wants them hunted down and arrested.

On his way to Paris, d'Artagnan meets a lady in waiting named Constance (Julie Delpy), and there is an attraction between the two of them. Then, when he gets to Paris, he meets Athos, Porthos, and Aramis separately and has disagreements with each of them, not realizing that they're musketeers. He schedules duels with each of them for later that day, but when he eventually learns who they are, he joins them instead of fighting them. D'Artagnan is later captured by Rochefort and locked in a dungeon. However, he escapes, and overhears Richelieu plotting with Milady de Winter (Rebecca De Mornay) to forge an alliance between the Cardinal and the Duke of Buckingham, who rules England. Richelieu wants to dethrone Louis and become king of France himself. (However, d'Artagnan doesn't get a good view of de Winter, which turns out to be important later on.) I want to mention probably the thing I remembered best from having seen this before is a line de Winter has during her conversation with Richelieu, which I won't spoil here. I think it's really cheesy, but I still found it kind of amusing. Suffice to say, his attempt to put the moves on her doesn't go well for him.

Speaking of Richelieu failing to seduce a woman, he also later tries that with Louis's wife, Queen Anne (Gabrielle Anwar). But she's in love with Louis, and loyal to him, besides really disliking Richelieu. She also has a conversation about love with Constance, who hopes to see d'Artagnan again, and hopes he feels the same way about her she does about him. Well, I'll say this: they do seem to end up together, at the end of the movie, but before that there's a scene with two of the musketeers teaching d'Artagnan about "wenching". That is, picking up women in a tavern. I thought they were pretty openly treating the women like objects, but the wenches seemed to like it. In any event, d'Artagnan clearly wasn't thinking about Constance at the time.

Anyway, lots of stuff happens in the movie that I don't feel the need to go into in detail. D'Artagnan tells the musketeers about the plot between Richelieu and "a spy", and they eventually stop de Winter from delivering a treaty to the Duke of Buckingham. But they still have to thwart an assassination attempt against Louis. And of course in the end, d'Artagnan officially becomes a musketeer.

Well... what else can I say? The three musketeers all had somewhat distinctive personalities, and Porthos was rather amusing. I thought the adventure story was decent. And I just think it's a fairly fun movie.