To refresh the minds of readers, The Three Musketeers is about, you got it, three musketeers: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, as they embark with young and incorrigible musketeer spawn d’Artagnan to fetch some pretty diamonds that the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu has had stolen as part of a diabolical plot to seize control of France.

To begin, let all mega-fans beware:  never has your precious adventure been placed in the hands of such an unqualified director.

For years Paul W.S. Anderson has been heckled by critics across the world, who have branded him one of the worst directors of his day, if not of all time. I can’t imagine why. You may recall some of his immense critical successes such as Mortal Kombat, the Resident Evil series, and Death Race. All are awful in their own right, but Hollywood’s worst director takes bad filmmaking to new depths of barbarity with his latest flick.

Save some death and treachery, the plot remains intact, with the basic storyline of retrieving the stolen jewels present, but it’s the manner in which it is done that disappoints.

First - and I wish there was a more scholarly way to say this - the acting sucked.  Oddly enough, the men who portrayed Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (Matthew MacFayden, Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans, respectively), were mostly tolerable. The irritation came with, well, basically everyone else.

Before dissecting individual performances, let me say that nothing in this film was more inconsistent than the accents. Up-and-comer Logan Lerman took the role of d’Artagnan, and aside from his forced emotion and lack of presence, there were times where his accent became troublesome to decipher.  Is he British, American, Irish, who knows?  For the most part he sounded American, but there were many times that a faint undercurrent of British broke free, and it was really annoying.

 Honestly, the only good performance and likeable character other than the three musketeers was Queen Anne, portrayed with quaint understatement by young British actress Juno Temple.  No grotesque melodramatics here, just a simple, calming aura to a film bereft of even a second of simplicity.

There were a few moments of humor and charm, and a couple that made it come off like a swashbuckling version of Terms of Endearment, where everyone would sit down and get really intense, and talk about how much their lives suck. If a film can’t stay consistent in mood, how can it expect its audience to do the same?   There would be a serious lack of surprise if someone went in with just mild expectations and wound up walking out.

So despite the occasional and pleasant clever quip, The Three Musketeers fails to find a balance between wickedly witty and eerily serious, rendering its weak performances not even mildly entertaining, and its brilliant Dumas foundation nothing but an unfortunately wasted premise.  1 out of 4 stars.