The Three Musketeers
Director: Richard Lester
Year Released: 1973
Rating: 1.5
A ninth-grade summer reading requirement by Papa Dumas gets yet another big-screen adaptation: D'Artagnan (Michael York) leaves his parents to make a name for himself, immediately picks fights with Aramis (Richard Chamberlain), Athos (Oliver Reed) and Porthos (Frank Finlay), they settle down and partner up, D'Artagnan falls in love with Constance Bonacieux (Raquel Welch) and then the four gentlemen take on the Comte de Rochefort (Christopher Lee), a henchman for the manipulative Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston). While the swordfights are top-notch, Lester is more interested in the "spectacle" of the production, making the characters (who are barely defined) secondary elements and depicting it as a silly circus, with individuals constantly flipping around and falling over and keeping his camera at a high angle to "capture" it all. When the somersaults and swashbuckling stop, it suddenly becomes a chore. This has plenty of defenders, yet I've never been much of a fan of the director's typically spastic aesthetic....