Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I admit that I'm not much for direct to video Disney movies. Of course, this isn't technically a sequel of any kind, but an original idea altogether. While by no means a great movie, I actually enjoyed this film! I think the best thing about it is probably the length. I was surprised at how short it was, but I thought that really worked out well. I mean, it was basically nothing but a feature length Mickey Mouse cartoon, so it made sense it wasn't too long. Another thing I admired was how good the animation was. I mean, this is much better than most cheesy direct to video stuff.Having just seen that stupid "Space Buddies" movie, maybe my standards weren't that high. It really is faithful to the original Disney cartoons. I remember Leonard Maltin talking about how impressed he was by a direct to video Disney movie and for the most part, I agree with him. I will admit there were problems. For some reason, Donald kept turning into a chicken. That was really weird and distracting. The Goofy holler might have been used too much. I still liked the slapstick and it helps that I'm such a sucker for romance. Heck, Mickey Mouse romance was actually one of my first introductions to the genre as a kid! So yeah, give this movie a chance! I recognized Jim Cummings' voice. ***

This movie is based on the old story of the 3 musketeers and Mickey, Donald and Goofy are those musketeers. In this movie it is their mission to protect the kingdom of which Queen Minnie rules. Also as always Mickey steals Minnie's heart and they are still the best fictional couple ever. Donald and Daisy make a great couple in this too and Goofy has Clarabelle the Cow. Of course Clarabelle was a villain in this until Goofy steals her heart. As always in this Mickey cartoons Pete is the main villain and plans to kidnap Minnie and take over the kingdom, but Mickey, Donald and Goofy stand in his way and save the kingdom. Mickey, Donald and Goofy make very fine heroes at the end of this and everyone lives happily ever after, except for Pete of course. Of course you know that in the old Disney Channel show Goof Troop he has a wife named Peg and a son named PJ who also appears in a Goofy Movie. This Mickey movie is definitely worth watching.

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.

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy have been appearing together in animated skits for the better part of eighty years and have gone through a number of hilarious, and sometimes touching misadventures. I personally am very fond of "Mickey's Trailer," the 1938 Technicolor short in which the three of them made a somewhat haphazard journey taking their mobile home over a mount, especially when Goofy, who was driving, left the motor running as he ran inside to get breakfast. They've also been in a lot of humorous contemporary adventures, so it is rather surprising that their first feature-length movie together is not all that impressive. It's not a bad movie, although there were some things in it I genuinely hated, and its sixty-minute length makes it easily durable, but I really wanted this movie to hit harder. I wanted more laughs, more heart, more of that wonderful sensation that great animation can give us.In the movie, the three mishaps stumble through predicament after predicament not as window-washers, not as locksmiths, not as painters, but as Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers. That is, loosely. To the movie's credit, it makes the appropriate choice of meshing the novel's 18th century setting with contemporary elements: the palace Mickey, Donald, and Goofy tend to is equipped with running water; a trio of hooded villains unsuccessfully attempt to assassinate Princess Minnie Mouse with an iron safe; Donald Duck tears off his uniform to reveal his traditional sailor attire. In the midst of their attempts to protect Minnie, the story is narrated by a singing turtle with a French accent, who stops in now and then with a few too many songs. The songs are a bold move, as they are set to the pattern of classical music. The one I liked the most was "Wings of Love," set to the Johann Strauss masterpiece "Blue Dunabe." I even got a chuckle out of a berating song toward Donald with Beethoven's Fifth thumping in the background. I was not, however, appeased by the opening and closing Musketeer themes—modeled after "Orpheus In the Underworld"—and could not stand for a second "Chains of Love" in which villainous Clarabelle Cow and affable Goofy fall instantaneously in love.This segues into another problem I have with the story. It does not have much heart or sense of place, because it frequently twists its plot with left-field tricks. One of the movie's lamest gimmicks regards Donald Duck. At the beginning, he's supposed to be a coward, and when faced with danger, instead of losing his famous temper, he physically transfigures from a duck into a chicken. Literally. His beak shrinks down, he grows a red plumage, and he goes "Buck-Buck!" Ignoring the fact that I personally don't like it when Goofy gets a love interest, the romance that sparks between him and Clarabelle is out-of-the-blue, underwritten, and utterly pointless. To just have him escape her by slipping on a banana peel or driving her bonkers with his usual naivety as she attempts to throw him off a bridge would have been far more effective. The chemistry between Donald Duck and Daisy Duck is absolutely nonexistent, making their finale together even more useless. These two characters have worked together very well in the past, in the cartoons, when they are given time to work and play off each other. Not here.But most saddening is how little is done between Mickey and Minnie. These are two of the cutest, most likable animation couples in history, and the screenplay gives them very little to do. Everything seems forced, as if the filmmakers threw it in because they were expected to. The scene where they first meet, where Mickey arrives as one of Minnie's new bodyguards, starts off charming and then slides into syrupy kitsch. They have a handful of smaller moments, but the big one in the middle still left me wanting more. As much as I liked the "Wings of Love" song, which plays behind them as they bond on a trip back to Paris, I would have preferred to see them banter and charm each other. Yes, they've been doing exactly that for more than seventy years, but that formula has not yet run out of steam. Not for me, at least.There were some things I did enjoy. I really liked the directing by Donovan Cook; he does a terrific job at staging his animated sequences in wide-screen. Not everything is framed as though for a square screen. The defining moment is where Peg-Leg Pete (playing, obviously, the bad guy) is told that he needs to recruit bodyguards for Minnie. He looks past her and sees our three heroes bungling as they try to wash windows. The shot is brilliantly set in extreme-wide focus, so we see everything. A lesser director would have done it comic-strip style, cutting from Pete to the Musketeers, then back to Pete, then the Musketeers, and so forth. Mr. Cook toggles between wide and close shots very deftly, and his misc en scenes I appealing. I also really liked the usual Disney animation with its plethora of glorious colors in a world that really seems alive with detail. And I did enjoy most of the movie's beginning, with our heroes dreaming about becoming musketeers.The second half of the movie, however, completely thuds, especially in its limp finale at an opera where the Musketeers battle with Peg-Leg Pete and the hooded figures whom I believe were modeled after the Beagle Boys from "Duck Tales." The twists and turns just do not play out well. Why, if Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are given a feature-length movie, does it have to be so brisk? Why not give them a full 90 minutes? This version of "The Three Musketeers" is not bad per se, but I really wanted something special when Mickey, Donald, and Goofy made their big-time debut together.