plot : a young french boy sees his parents killed before his eyes by tim roth , oops . . . i 
mean , an evil man . 
he vows revenge on that man and is taught the ways of the musketeer by some old dude who used to be one himself ? 
anyway , fourteen years go by and . . . arrgh , well , you know the rest . . . swish-swish-zzzzzzz ! 
critique : this is a pretty bad movie . 
let's see , where should i start ? 
okay , first of all , the story is just plain boring . 
it's not original , is entirely predictable and lacks energy . 
okay , what's next ? 
acting , you say . 
hmmmm , well , the main actor , justin chambers , is basically an uncharismatic version of chris o'donnell but with less range ( think about that ! ) , and mena suvari , is just plain off . 
not as bad as thora birch was in dungeons & dragons , but entirely miscast , with bad deliveries , awful sequences and a piss-poor accent that comes and goes . 
now i'm not sure if this was ms . suvari's fault or the director's , but i've definitely seen her at a much higher level than in this film . 
the only semi-saving grace actor-wise is tim roth as the irrepressible " bad guy " , but once again , it's not something that we haven't seen before . . . a 
thousand times . . . by the same guy ! ! 
tim , please . . . for the love of god , beg your agent to ask the marketplace for some modern day " american roles " for you as a " nice guy " in a romantic comedy or something . 
stretch , dude . . . stretch ! ! 
we all know that you can do much better than this gunk . 
alright , what else was bad in this film ? 
oh yeah , the score ! 
yikes , how's about taking it down a few notches there , fellas ? 
this thing blares in your ear whenever it feels the need to accentuate a certain scene , but actually does little more than annoy . 
i think it's important for the man behind the music to recognize that this film isn't a " real epic " by any stretch of the imagination . 
it's a fluffy rehashed cake-walk created by some " shrewd " studio heads who decided to take advantage of the whole " kung-fu " phenomenon in films , and test it out on an old classic . 
dudes . . . you 
failed all around ! 
 ( keep reading ) 
the editing is also pretty shoddy in this movie , the dialogue banal and stilted and the plot problems . . . plentiful ! 
 ( why does the guy on top of the horse carriage just stand there when his opponent takes forever scampering his way back to the top ? 
why don't they just cut the mouseketeer's rope at the top of the tower , instead of jumping down on their own chords and fighting him while hanging ? 
why doesn't anybody look a day older , when the sequence says " 14 years later " ? 
 ( at least . . . change 
your shirt , man ! ) 
keep in mind that i have never strayed away from championing certain movies that are created simply for the sake of a " fun time " , but this flick just didn't cut it for me . 
it was boring for stretches , the acting was atrocious at times ( the " romantic " scene between suvari and chambers next to the lake reminded me of plays in high school which made you cringe ) , there was little reason to care for anyone and since when were the musketeers fat ? 
i will give the movie this much , and that is that its main reason for being ( its " raison-d'etre " , as the french would say ) , its fight sequences , do come through despite the lack of their numbers in the film . 
i was hoping that the movie would be packed with cool stuntwork as promoted in its trailer , but what you see there , are essentially the snippets from the two major ( and cool ) swashbuckling sequences from the film . 
the first comes right at the beginning of the movie , while the other essentially finishes the film off , hanging from the tower and juggling off ladders . 
the ladder sequence itself is a definite keeper but unfortunately the rest of the movie is just regurgitated crap . 
and can anyone please tell me how catherine deneuve got her name placed at the top of this film's credits ? 
hullo ? 
the film is called the musketeer and stars a dude name justin chambers . 
deneuve is barely in this movie ! 
ugh , just another small thing that annoyed me about this trash . 
now say it together , gang : " all for one , and one for all . . . we 
vow to stay away from it all ! ! " 
thank me later . 
where's joblo coming from ? 
a knight's tale ( 7/10 ) - american outlaws ( 5/10 ) - crouching tiger , hidden dragon ( 7/10 ) - the matrix ( 8/10 ) - the replacement killers ( 6/10 ) - romeo must die ( 3/10 ) - shanghai noon ( 6/10 )