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igenlodeI stumbled across the Italian comedy film "Moschettieri del re" by accident (in its Russian dub, under the YouTube title "4 Musketeers are miserable leading a boring peaceful life") and actually enjoyed it a good deal; as a piece of cinema I think this is more successful than the Russian "Return of the Musketeers", and in a not dissimilar vein, being set at about the same period of history and painted with an equally broad brush in terms of fantastic improbability. The fact that as a native English-speaker I was watching it in Russian obviously means that I was missing out on any finer points in the script and wasn't in a position to judge the quality or delivery of the original Italian dialogue in any case, but I thought it worked.
The humour isn't exactly subtle -- in a film with a lax attitude to continuity (there is a good reason for this) one ongoing theme is the smell of pigs that clings to d'Artagnan's clothing and person, for example -- but, crucially, it's not annoying. There is nothing worse than attempted laughs that grate horribly on the viewer, and the comedy here is by and large good-humoured and in keeping with the characters as established, e.g. the running gag about d'Artagnan's horses. And the balance of humour and actual emotion/adventure is right; this isn't pure spoof, and when Aramis loses his temper over the others' unkind 'experiments' on their superpowered mute sidekick and walks out, for example, the breach is painful and palpable.
Yes, they do have a superpowered mute side-kick. And sunglasses (for no reason other than to provide an eye-catching image for the promotional poster, I think; mercifully, they don't actually use them save in one brief dialogue where Athos points out that you can't see anything when wearing them at night), and gadgets (which they also don't use), all of which are given out in a deliberate Bond-homage scene. The side-kick, however, plays quite an important role, occupying more or less the position of Planchet in the various adaptations where the Musketeers have a single knockabout servant between them, and eventually acquires a name and -- in a tear-jerking scene that's treated pretty much as genuine angst apart for its inherent absurdity -- an honorary rank.
The inventor who created him (and named him simply "Servant", being singularly ungifted in that sphere; the superb horses he provides are called simply One, Two, Three and Four, though that doesn't stop d'Artagnan calling pathetically to his One by name when it gets wounded...) has endowed his creation chiefly with the property of surviving vast amounts of damage without significant suffering or injury, and in that capacity he proves very useful to his masters as a human shield. But it is to the actor's credit that he also manages to give his impassive and non-speaking character a sympathetic personality.
All the actors do well, taking their comic roles seriously; the standout is of course the actor playing d'Artagnan, still full of life at the age of fifty (and regarded from time to time with a slightly weary air by his older companions). These are not the Dumas characters from "The Three Musketeers", still less Dumas' own sequel versions of the characters, but versions aged up into an alternative future where Porthos, for example, has lost a lot of weight and acquired a laudanum habit and Athos has overcome the memories of his marriage and is exhausted by orgies (although like many of the plot points this is milked for a few effective gags when originally introduced, and then quietly forgotten).
But I think the reason why the film worked for me is that in many ways the aged-up characters are played quite straight; they bicker, they get into embarrassing scrapes (and out of them), and they are larger than life, but they aren't being deliberately debunked and they aren't portrayed as stupid... as opposed to occasionally wilfully obtuse! This is a comedy adventure and not a send-up, and it has touching moments in addition to the pure slapstick such as d'Artagnan trying to kick open an unlocked door that turns out to open towards him, plus some decently entertaining dialogue. There's a genuine sense of relationship between the characters, and overall it has been made with evident affection towards the original as well as an appreciation of its absurdities -- and, to be honest, I think any successful adaptation of "The Three Musketeers" pretty much *has* to be done with a side-helping of lively humour, or it just becomes a tedious string of fights and set-piece action sequences.
And I felt that the 'Wizard of Oz'-style ending (where all the characters are revealed to have their 'real-world' counterparts) does actually work quite well in terms of justifying the inconsistencies and zany aspects of the rest of the film. The fact that, for one thing, nobody ever gets round to telling the musketeers precisely what their 'mission' is, or deciphering the secret map. The sense of bickering brotherhood between the four. Milady's miraculous youth and transformation. The switch in tone when it comes to the fate of the Servant. And, arguably, the somewhat childish nature of much of the amusement...
This film doesn't really have a plot -- beyond the opening gambit of "The Musketeers reunite thirty years later" -- but there is a reason for that. Meanwhile it's a series of episodic adventures towards an unknown end, in the spirit of an ongoing serial or soap opera. It has a decent Athos, which is always a selling-point so far as I am concerned, even if he does have a face like Toby Jones :-p The characters are well-defined and remain consistent to the updated versions of themselves that have been established, and I particularly liked the direction in which the older Aramis was developed here. I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did, and even if it wasn't 'real' Russian it was still good practice!
(And I was able to understand large chunks of it on first hearing, and more or less all of it with rewinding and reference to a dictionary for some of the slangier terms; this is nice lowbrow stuff with plenty of action clues as to the subject of discussion, and of course I have already acquired a good deal of the basic vital vocabulary for the subject matter... :-D)
The humour isn't exactly subtle -- in a film with a lax attitude to continuity (there is a good reason for this) one ongoing theme is the smell of pigs that clings to d'Artagnan's clothing and person, for example -- but, crucially, it's not annoying. There is nothing worse than attempted laughs that grate horribly on the viewer, and the comedy here is by and large good-humoured and in keeping with the characters as established, e.g. the running gag about d'Artagnan's horses. And the balance of humour and actual emotion/adventure is right; this isn't pure spoof, and when Aramis loses his temper over the others' unkind 'experiments' on their superpowered mute sidekick and walks out, for example, the breach is painful and palpable.
Yes, they do have a superpowered mute side-kick. And sunglasses (for no reason other than to provide an eye-catching image for the promotional poster, I think; mercifully, they don't actually use them save in one brief dialogue where Athos points out that you can't see anything when wearing them at night), and gadgets (which they also don't use), all of which are given out in a deliberate Bond-homage scene. The side-kick, however, plays quite an important role, occupying more or less the position of Planchet in the various adaptations where the Musketeers have a single knockabout servant between them, and eventually acquires a name and -- in a tear-jerking scene that's treated pretty much as genuine angst apart for its inherent absurdity -- an honorary rank.
The inventor who created him (and named him simply "Servant", being singularly ungifted in that sphere; the superb horses he provides are called simply One, Two, Three and Four, though that doesn't stop d'Artagnan calling pathetically to his One by name when it gets wounded...) has endowed his creation chiefly with the property of surviving vast amounts of damage without significant suffering or injury, and in that capacity he proves very useful to his masters as a human shield. But it is to the actor's credit that he also manages to give his impassive and non-speaking character a sympathetic personality.
All the actors do well, taking their comic roles seriously; the standout is of course the actor playing d'Artagnan, still full of life at the age of fifty (and regarded from time to time with a slightly weary air by his older companions). These are not the Dumas characters from "The Three Musketeers", still less Dumas' own sequel versions of the characters, but versions aged up into an alternative future where Porthos, for example, has lost a lot of weight and acquired a laudanum habit and Athos has overcome the memories of his marriage and is exhausted by orgies (although like many of the plot points this is milked for a few effective gags when originally introduced, and then quietly forgotten).
But I think the reason why the film worked for me is that in many ways the aged-up characters are played quite straight; they bicker, they get into embarrassing scrapes (and out of them), and they are larger than life, but they aren't being deliberately debunked and they aren't portrayed as stupid... as opposed to occasionally wilfully obtuse! This is a comedy adventure and not a send-up, and it has touching moments in addition to the pure slapstick such as d'Artagnan trying to kick open an unlocked door that turns out to open towards him, plus some decently entertaining dialogue. There's a genuine sense of relationship between the characters, and overall it has been made with evident affection towards the original as well as an appreciation of its absurdities -- and, to be honest, I think any successful adaptation of "The Three Musketeers" pretty much *has* to be done with a side-helping of lively humour, or it just becomes a tedious string of fights and set-piece action sequences.
And I felt that the 'Wizard of Oz'-style ending (where all the characters are revealed to have their 'real-world' counterparts) does actually work quite well in terms of justifying the inconsistencies and zany aspects of the rest of the film. The fact that, for one thing, nobody ever gets round to telling the musketeers precisely what their 'mission' is, or deciphering the secret map. The sense of bickering brotherhood between the four. Milady's miraculous youth and transformation. The switch in tone when it comes to the fate of the Servant. And, arguably, the somewhat childish nature of much of the amusement...
This film doesn't really have a plot -- beyond the opening gambit of "The Musketeers reunite thirty years later" -- but there is a reason for that. Meanwhile it's a series of episodic adventures towards an unknown end, in the spirit of an ongoing serial or soap opera. It has a decent Athos, which is always a selling-point so far as I am concerned, even if he does have a face like Toby Jones :-p The characters are well-defined and remain consistent to the updated versions of themselves that have been established, and I particularly liked the direction in which the older Aramis was developed here. I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did, and even if it wasn't 'real' Russian it was still good practice!
(And I was able to understand large chunks of it on first hearing, and more or less all of it with rewinding and reference to a dictionary for some of the slangier terms; this is nice lowbrow stuff with plenty of action clues as to the subject of discussion, and of course I have already acquired a good deal of the basic vital vocabulary for the subject matter... :-D)