Just Call It Young Men in Tights

The bounding teen idols in “The Three Musketeers” (citywide) just barely fit comfortably into the film’s overstuffed 17th-Century decor. Kiefer Sutherland’s Athos, Chris O’Donnell’s D’Artagnan, Charlie Sheen’s Aramis and Oliver Platt’s portly Porthos are an incongruous quartet: They’re leaping and wenching and fencing, but they’re also winking at the audience. These actors want to experience the pleasures of an old-time Hollywood costume swashbuckler but they don’t want to lose their cool.

The Alexandre Dumas novel has already been filmed so many times--the best adaptation was probably Richard Lester’s 1974 jape--that a new version cries out for a reason for being. The reason is depressingly clear: What we’ve got here is “Young Swords.”

The familiars of the story are made comic-book simple. The intrigues of the French court, as Cardinal Richelieu (Tim Curry) attempts to disband the King’s Musketeers and steal the crown, are designed as a series of boo-hiss set-pieces, full of nefarious villains and winning crusaders.

But director Stephen Herek, best known for “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” and screenwriter David Loughery aren’t really inspired by the romanticism of the material. They’re not inspired by much of anything, really. Like their young cast, they don’t want to risk looking square by showing off any real ardor. (The ardor is all in the score--or, to be more precise, the overscore--by Michael Kamen.) But they don’t go full out as jokesters either. The film’s tone wobbles between straight-arrow action and curdled camp.

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The most obvious difference between this film version and the many others is that, this time around, the three Musketeers and D’Artagnan are all twentysomethings. This places the story closer to Dumas’ original conception but it also introduces a problem. None of these kids seem ripe enough for grand-scale heroism. The athleticism of a Douglas Fairbanks or a Gene Kelly could turn this old warhorse into a sleek stallion, but no one in this new film has anything like their prancing sportiness. With the exception of Platt’s Porthos, who at least is given some inventive physical comedy shtick in his fight scenes, the choreography is stumblebum stuff. He keeps the camera boring inside the action so that we get lots of flying limbs and flying dust, and that’s probably a wise approach. It distracts from the clunky calisthenics.

It might have been possible for this movie’s mixture of straight arrow and camp to work if the filmmakers had the right ribald spirit. The Musketeers saga, starting with Fairbanks in the 1921 silent version, has usually been filmed with tongue planted firmly in cheek. But what comes across in the new version is a kind of preening teen-idol dress-up ball. We can see how Sutherland and Sheen and the others enjoy dressing up in their 17th-Century duds and swinging their swords--it’s a boy’s fantasy that doesn’t have the heft to become the audience’s fantasy, too. And since the filmmakers have been careful to keep everything family-entertainment-style--the rating, for “action, violence and some sensuality” is PG--the romp has a chaste, kidsy flavor: “The Three Mouseketeers.”

A few of the performers have wit, notably Tim Curry as Richelieu, who gives his best lines a ticklish nastiness. Curry has the audience on his side in a way that none of the other actors do; his professionalism is so expert that he puts most of the cast to shame. (You keep expecting Alan Rickman from “Robin Hood” to show up and give him some competition.) Rebecca De Mornay, as Milday De Winter, doesn’t try to camp it up, which may have been a mistake, but her professionalism shines, too. She gives the film its only “heart.” When she jumps off a cliff, the film goes over the side with her.

‘The Three Musketeers’

Charlie Sheen: Aramis Kiefer Sutherland: Athos Chris O’Donnell: D’Artagnan Oliver Platt: Porthos

A Walt Disney Pictures presentation. Director Stephen Herek. Producer Joe Roth and Roger Birnbaum. Executive producers Jordan Kerner and Jon Avnet. Screenplay David Loughery. Cinematographer Dean Semler. Editor John F. Link. Costumes John Mollo. Music Michael Kamen. Production design Wolf Kroeger. Art director Herta Hareiter-Pischinger. Set decorator Bruno Cesari. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG.