For the past month or two I've been thinking a lot about the late great, Tim Curry, actor most famous for The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the TV mini-series IT. And sure, he most famous for those movies for sure but I was born in the late 80’s, and I didn't even know Curry played a strange drag queen and killer clown. I mostly remembered him from playing Cardinal Richelieu in Disney's Three Musketeers in 1993, as well as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island. Now Muppet Treasure Island will get to that later, but The Three Musketeers was one of those films I remembered watching in my high school years and this film still brings back great memories furthermore was Pirates of the Caribbean before Pirates of the Caribbean became a thing.
D'Artagnan (Chris O'Donnell) travels to Paris hoping to become a musketeer, one of the French King's elite bodyguards, only to discover that the corps been disbanded by conniving Cardinal Richelieu (Tim Curry), who secretly hopes to usurp the throne. Fortunately, Athos, Porthos and Aramis (Keefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Charlie Sheen) have refused to lay down their weapons and continue to protect their king. D'Artagnan joins with the rogues to expose Richelieu's plot against the crown.
I honestly don't remember the first time I sat down and watched the movie all the way through I do in fact remember watching parts of the film after school or on the weekend this would most certainly be on the Disney Channel on Dish Network or any Cable Channel that we would switch every three-ish years and granted it could be my final elementary school years and junior high school years, somewhere between the late 90's or the early 2000's moreover it was a time when Disney wasn't the Galactic Empire we know today as well as purchasing Twentieth Century Fox, basically back when those years and decades we an amazing time to watch movies. And like The Musketeer and Man in the Iron Mask, The Three Musketeers was one of those films that was just fun to watch from beginning to end and sure this film is in fact cliche and I remember Tim Curry chewing the scenery but that was all I remember of Tim Curry in this movie was chewing the entire set, and rewatching the film again on Disney Plus, you can tell that Tim Curry was just having the time of his life, with great lines like after killing a prisoner he reply's "One less mouth to feed", for which I chuckled at that because I thought that was funny coming from him and his two infamous lines when he places a bounty on the Musketeers he says dead or alive and then later says "I prefer dead" which I could tell that he was like wait let me rephrase that sentence. and more importantly his greatest scenery chewer is using the queen by his side and she reply's I'd rather die, he out of nowhere just shouts "THAT CAN BE ARRANGED" like he's trying to be scary but for me as a teenager I always replied, "YOU, EIGHTEEN?" And for some reasons it's just funny personally because you can tell that Curry is doing is all playing a scheming antagonist with an evil laughter and all especially being British also, and yet you can tell this man is just having fun and more importantly had that reputation of playing colorful/theatrical villains for which really, he was born for the role especially the way the script was written if you asked me. Granted if you look at this movie for what it was in the mid-nineties, it's basically Disney's answer to 20th Century Fox's Young Guns and surprisingly enough, producer Joe Roth produced both Young Guns as well as this version of the Three Musketeers so, technically Roth was probably up and out of Fox and Disney asked him to produce a movie of his choice and he pitched them young guns meets Alexander Dumas and Disney was like "Sure". Now granted everyone would for sure think of it as Young Guns including Leonard Maltin but I would prefer this movie over the Young Guns movies because this film was at least fun and entertaining and a Disney film that wasn't evil Disney also, this film includes up and coming actor in Chris O'Donnell before he ruins well, Joel Schumacher ruin his career but that's a whole other story and Julie Delpy before she made one of the Sunset films for which I remember watching and was bored out of my mind, though let’s not forget Tim Curry in the best cliched villain ever. The other thing in what makes this film so, nostalgic is that this film brings back to the Errol Flynn movies of the late thirties and early forties as well as almost reminds me of Pirates of the Caribbean where it has that sort of Pirates flair of you being transported into this world with a ton of great production sets and it has that great feel of your reliving your favorite swashbuckling film from the past. I will admit that this film is not perfect in anyway it's a hundred percent in the cliched realm of things but of all the movies I remember Tim Curry in this film I would most certainly choose to remember him the most as well as his great cameo in Psych. So, if you have a Disney Plus account, I will highly recommend in watching this with your kids and see if they can love this movie as I did although none of my parents showed me this movie this was the Disney Channel back when I'll say it again, the Galactic Empire.
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