Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (2004)

Overlong Disney cheapquel made for DVD and based on the Dumas tale, The Three Musketeers.Mickey, Donald and Goofy are the Musketeers wannabees in a film where there is spirited use of music but little else. The movie opens with a narrating turtle where our three aspiring heroes plus Pluto are street urchins robbed by masked bandits and saved by the Royal Musketeers who they now want to emulate.They work as janitors in the palace, dreaming of becoming musketeers but each have flaws. Donald is cowardly, Goofy is goofy and Mickey is too small.Minnie Mouse is the Princess of France but Captain Pete has plans to take over the kingdom and our hapless trio spring into action.There is very little spark or wit in the film. You know its not too good when my son started playing with his Nintendo hand-held when watching it on TV.

Historically during Disney's classic era back in the 40s and 50s, they tried to emulate Warner Brothers and MGM's humor, but slowed down to allow kids to digest the jokes with their parents. The kids didn't always get the jokes, but the parents smiled knowingly nevertheless, even though they didn't laugh much. If you wanted to laugh, then you saw a WB or MGM toon. Disney was strictly kids fare. Disney has tried to reinvent themselves since maybe about the mid 90s or so, but bringing us, dare I say it, half baked sequels or animated films related to classic Disney properties. I am told that Michael Eisner was responsible for this new tact, and I can't say I really blame him, though I'm curious as to what the thinking was for the Disney empire. Was Disney Studios faltering? Heck if I know, but with a series of lackluster productions that tried to bring fast paced humor and slapstick to the movie theatres and home video markets, it wasn't hard to see that it seemed like the folks at Disney were grasping at straws.So it is with this film. The story is a very G-rated version of Dumas' tale, which we can forgive as the Disney people are using Mickey et al to tell a tale of a bid for the French throne. It's cute in this regard that we see Micky, Donald and Goofy (along with a couple of other supporting characters) relive a kid friendly version of the Three Musketeers.My beef is with the fact that it's a pretty lack luster effort in the writing department. The fast paced gags, to me at least, seemed a little more telegraphed and haphazard in terms of logic than equivalent efforts by Disney in the 80s and early 90s. To juxtapose one merely only look at Fantasia 2000, and the Noah's Ark sequence starring Donald Duck as Noah's helper in rounding up the animals. There the sight gags make a little more sense. Donald has an objective to achieve, and the jokes makes sense for the tale. The Three Musketeers is more randomized and off the wall, but to be honest in a bad way.The DVD has a behind the scenes look at the film from concept to execution, and one wonders why more staff were not brought in to review the story board session; i.e. a test audience to see if the gags worked. But, I suppose that's neither here nor there.All in all it's an endearing effort, but doesn't shine as it should have had more talent been brought in to double check the logic and vibrancy of the humor drawn and written for the film.It could have been better.On the upside they did draw the characters as they should have always been drawn. And that's welcome. Not a CGI film (thank goodness), but an old fashioned hand drawn flick.If you're not picky about your kids' entertainment, then maybe give this film a shot. Otherwise, and I'd never thought I'd even say this about a Disney film, but you could do better.Give it a shot. The thing that saves this film is that Disney production values are injected into the execution of the animation, and therefore the film visually carries the audience through a tale and screenplay that needed some work.See it once.

Good things about this film: Very good humour, at least one laugh every few minutes, good use of classical music for songs, good animation, sweet simple images of Versailles, good talent and a good job of Mickey and his friends! :-)A tortoise in the studio is very excited about his comic about the three musketeers and cannot help "singing along". When the narrator of a TV programme falls down a hole in the floor, the poor tortoise ends up taking the narrator's place and reads out his comic. He begins with Mickey Donald and Goofy struggling to survive in the gutter. Then they meet the royal musketeers...Good for any Mickey Mouse fan and any lover of classical music used by Disney, people who like good quality humour (both slightly slapstick and humour) and cartoon things which are CGI free!Enjoy "Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers! :-)7 and a half out of ten.

I was visiting my grandkids last week and after a long day of activities, and a family supper, my daughter asked me if I wanted to go down to the T.V. room and watch a movie with the kids.At that moment it sounded like the worst idea I had heard in a long time. I had visions of watching some 3D flying robots or some brightly colored animated ponies. So, imagine my surprise when they said they wanted to watch their Mickey Mouse movie.I've been around a long time and I can remember seeing Mickey shorts at the theater when I was a boy, and I had no idea that the kids today even knew who the little mouse was. In addition, I hadn't heard about any Mickey Mouse movies in a very long time, so I was intrigued to see what this movie that the kids all wanted to see was all about.And let me tell you I sat down on the couch with my grandkids all around me and we all laughed at Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, as they barreled through their own wacky version of the Three Musketeers tale. The girls loved the Princess Minnie most, while the boys like the swash-buckling swordplay. We all like the fun music, with the very funny words.I wondered if this had been some old movie that got lost in the Disney vaults, it was that good, and had such a timeless feel.If you want to see a nice little family film that everyone in the house can have some fun with, I recommend this new Mickey Mouse movie to you and yours with full enthusiasm.I'm Tex Nickle and I'm telling you that "Mickey is still Kickin'"