In this movie you just want to reach out and strangle several of the characters. They're just so darn annoying. Minnie for instance is incredibly annoying. Her attitude is the prissy "I can't do anything for myself" attitude and her voice amplifies it. The narrator turtle is one of those characters you wish had never been thought up and would somehow just vanish from the movie entirely. At on point I had forgotten about him since he'd just vanished from the movie, until he showed up again with one of his annoying songs. There's nothing astounding in this movie at all. All the characters are their typical selves, only they seem a little more stupid or chicken. One good point was the animation. It was nicely done. Overall it's not that great of a movie. Maybe a rental sometime.

For the last couple days I have been sick. Very sick. Like Night-of-the-Living-Dead kind of sick. So today, my Dad dropped off a couple boxes of kleenex, medicine and "Mickey's The Three Musketeers" to cheer me up. Although this was a film that I had planned to review it was not one I was rushing out to buy.

And now, having just spent the afternoon watching it with soup and tissues, I can't say I'm in fact wild about the idea that I now own this film. This one may actually end up donated to the library as soon as I am fit enough to leave my apartment.

Alright, so what's so bad about it?
Let's start with the turtle narrator--the SINGING turtle narrator. The movie opens with the turtle begging this big, dressed up guy--the true narrator--to please, please, PLEASE let him sing his great songs about the three musketeers. The fancy-pants narrator's response is to thwack the turtle over the head with his own lute.

If this doesn't give you a fair indication of the quality of the songs, I don't know what could. Still, (unfortunately) fancy-pants narrator suffers a fluke accident and the turtle ends up narrating the story... complete with lute and songs.

In the behind the scene featurette, the makers of the film describe the songs as a parody of operaetta. This could have been funny, but sadly it wasn't. It was a series of vaguely familiar songs that had been mangled by uninspired lyrics.

This sense of being slightly mangled seems to be a common theme throughout the film. The makers of the film called it 'updating' these classic characters. I call taking their most obvious qualities and upping them to the nth degree.

Mickey isn't just plucky and naive, he's plucky and naive to the point you want to smack him.

Minnie is girly and romantic to the point you really want to take her by the shoulders and shake her--a lot.

And Donald... poor Donald... for whatever reason, they decided to turn Donald into "the coward" of the three musketeers. Now, it may have been a while since I've seen a Donald short, but isn't he the short-tempered guy that if you poke him in the butt he comes back fighting mad. I cringed everytime they morphed him into a chicken and had him scurrying under the nearest cooking pot.

Does the movie have its bright spots? Yea, a few. The running gag where nobody can understand Donald was kinda cute. And Pete makes a pretty good bad guy. Daisy is the only one of the bunch that I thought made it through her character update and came out the other side as a better character. And, although I don't usually comment on DVD extras, the behind-the-scenes and cast commentary (that is a scene with commentary by Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Pete) had me smiling more than the whole movie... which I admit, is kinda sad.

Rent it if you must, but avoiding it might be a better plan.