The Return of the Musketeers

Twenty years have passed since we last saw D’Artagnan and company. Michael York rounds up the old gang to face a new threat: Milady de Winter’s vengeful daughter, played by Kim Cattrall, and the eternal villain Rochefort, played once again by Christopher Lee. The setup promises swashbuckling fun. The execution stumbles badly.

The film looks magnificent. Shot in Toledo, Spain, with lavish costumes and authentic locations, it creates an immersive world. But style can’t save a story that’s forgotten what made the original films sparkle.

The humor lurches between clever and clumsy. When Queen Anne learns the English plan to execute King Charles, she’s shocked they’d kill their own monarch. “The English,” deadpans Cardinal Mazarin, “will permit anything except cruelty to horses or a rise in the price of beer.” Perfect. But then we get D’Artagnan perched in a tree like Wile E. Coyote, only to have the tree tip over as he prepares to leap. Painful.

The physical comedy feels desperate when performed by actors pushing sixty. York gamely tries, but Richard Chamberlain barely appears, and Oliver Reed’s health problems require creative camera angles to keep him seated. Even Christopher Lee, once so commanding, looks exhausted.

The cast’s lethargy stems from more than age. Roy Kinnear, who played Planchet, died after falling from a horse during production. Body doubles completed his scenes, creating awkward moments where he speaks off-camera or appears as a distant figure. As Lee wrote, “Roy’s death spread such a pall of misery that it was surprising the film was ever finished and, in truth, the world would have lost nothing if it hadn’t been.”¹

That harsh assessment rings true. Getting the gang back together to adapt Dumas’s Twenty Years After seemed inspired. Instead, it proves that some magic can’t be recaptured. The musketeers have aged out of their own adventure.