WORLD TOUR Day 41 - Paris, France
BEFORE: Here's my reasoning on the connection - Gene Kelly was in the 1948 version of "The Three Musketeers" (a clip of which also appeared in "Singin' in the Rain", I think) so it makes sense to transition from "An American in Paris" to a Musketeer film, even if I can't make the direct linking work. Of course, I grew up watching the film series made in the 1970's with Michael York as D'Artagnan, also starring Oliver Reed, Faye Dunaway and Raquel Welch. Which might explain why I find corsets so fascinating. I really should track those films down and watch them again.
I'm shocked to discover that direct linking IS possible - Leslie Caron from "An American In Paris" was also in the film "Funny Bones" with Oliver Platt (last seen in "X-Men: First Class"). Huh, how about that?
THE PLOT: The three best of the disbanded Musketeers - Athos, Porthos, and Aramis - join a young hotheaded would-be-Musketeer, D'Artagnan, to stop the Cardinal Richelieu's evil plot: to form an alliance with enemy England by way of the mysterious Milady.
AFTER: Upon completion of this film, I looked up the plot of the original novel by Alexandre Dumas (not "Dumbass", as he was called in "The Shawshank Redemption"). This film starts out relatively faithful to the book, with D'Artagnan heading to Paris to become a Musketeer, and accidentally offending all three Musketeers along the way, until he's scheduled to fight duels with all three.
After that, things tend to diverge a bit. The king of France is little more than a teenager in this one, as is the Queen, so it's unlikely that she'd be carrying on with the Duke of Buckingham that's central to the novel's plot. Instead here it's Cardinal Richelieu who's in league with the enemy, and he sends the Countess D'Winter to meet a ship and bring his contract to Buckingham. Oh, and the Musketeers have been disbanded, except for the famous three holdouts, the title characters.
It's a rather simplistic version of a very complex plot, but it preserves some of the key details, like Athos' backstory and connection to Milady D'Winter, and the connection between D'Artagnan's landlord and Constance, handmaiden to the Queen.
On the other hand, some may regard this as Hollywood schlock, since there's not a French word of dialogue, or even a French accent, anywhere in the film. The casting was definitely designed to put asses in the seats, playing upon the success of "Young Guns" and perhaps also the swashbuckling of "The Princess Bride".
I didn't see the need to distinguish the personalities of the Musketeers to this extent, making Porthos the "gadget guy" was just silly, and making Aramis (played by Charlie Sheen) into the poet/lover seemed sort of prescient. So I'm kind of split on this one, it's a bastardization of literature, but it had some good swordfights and a fair share of humor.
Also starring Chris O'Donnell (last seen in "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore"), Charlie Sheen (last seen in "Due Date"), Kiefer Sutherland (last heard in "Marmaduke"), Tim Curry (last heard in "Bartok the Magnificent"), Rebecca De Mornay (last seen in "Wedding Crashers"), Gabrielle Anwar (last seen in "Scent of a Woman"), Julie Delpy (last seen in "An American Werewolf in Paris").
RATING: 5 out of 10 torture chambers
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