THE RETURN OF THE MUSKETEERS

 

My recent purchase of Criterion's Blu-ray set of director Richard Lester's THE THREE/FOUR MUSKETEERS inspired me to seek out this sequel, which I had never seen. THE RETURN OF THE MUSKETEERS was made in 1988 by Lester, and it reunites most of the same cast, and it was even shot mostly in Spain, as were the first two films. 

If you were not aware that there was a later sequel to the Lester MUSKETEERS films, don't feel bad--when it was originally released in Europe in 1989, it didn't do much at the box office. In fact, it didn't even get a theatrical release in the United States--it made its American debut on the USA TV cable channel in 1991. 

Another reason the movie has faded into obscurity is due to the tragedy that happened during its filming. Actor Roy Kinnear, reprising his role as D'Artagnan's comic servant, fell off a horse during a sequence and died the next day. This event cast a pall over whatever reception the film might have gotten, and it was a major reason why Richard Lester never directed another feature film. It's hard to watch THE RETURN OF THE MUSKETEERS without constantly thinking of Kinnear's untimely demise. (Kinnear still appears in the film, and in some sequences he is doubled by another actor who never shows his face--a very distracting process.) Christopher Lee, who returns in this film in his role as Rochefort, was even quoted as saying that it would have been better if the film had been shut down after Kinnear's accident. 

So, how is the film itself?? It's much better than I thought it would have been, but it isn't on the level of the first two of Lester's MUSKETEERS films. RETURN tries to recreate the dash & panache of the earlier entries, but there's a sense of something missing. It may have been that the main actors were a bit older--although, looking at it from a 21st Century perspective, they weren't really that old when this movie was made. Certainly Kinnear's death must have had a major effect on the production, but one gets the feeling that the final result wasn't what Lester and screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser intended. 

The movie is well-made--the Spanish locations are very striking, and the production design and costumes are at the same level as the first two films. The film is based on Dumas' TWENTY YEARS AFTER, so it's not as if this was just a random attempt to squeeze more money out of a long-ago franchise (which is now standard operating procedure in today's cinema). A number of elements of Dumas' book are actually used in Fraser's screenplay. 

If RETURN has a major fault, it's that the fine line Lester and Fraser drew between high adventure and slapstick comedy in the first two films veers too much into humor in the sequel. There's a lot of background detail in RETURN concerning the political situation in France, and there's also a subplot dealing with Oliver Cromwell and the execution of England's King Charles I, but most of this will go over the heads of any viewers, since it is the comic elements that are emphasized. 

It is nice to see Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed, and Frank Finlay reunited, and the four still have an easy chemistry with each other, although they almost never appear all together at any time in the film. Geraldine Chaplin returns as Queen Anne, and as mentioned Christopher Lee comes back as Rochefort (although the actor gets very little to do). Jean-Pierre Cassel, who played King Louis in the first two Musketeer films, gets a very silly cameo here as Cyrano de Bergerac (a cameo I believe the film would have been much better without). 

To compliment all the veterans in RETURN, there are two major roles for then-young actors C. Thomas Howell and Kim Cattrall. Howell plays Raoul, the adopted son of Oliver Reed's Athos. Cattrall gets the showiest role of all as Justine, the daughter of the diabolical Lady de Winter. Cattrall plays it to the hilt, and she winds up making the biggest impression. (I wonder if Lester was setting up Howell and Cattrall to be the stars of any later future Musketeer adventures.) 

Overall I would say that THE RETURN OF THE MUSKETEERS is an above-average film, and it's certainly worth seeing for the cast alone. Like so many other sequels/remakes/reboots/reworkings, RETURN suffers from the "We've all seen this before and in a much better context" disease. If Lester had really tried to make a faithful adaptation of TWENTY YEARS AFTER--a story concerning the trials and tribulations of four old friends who now find they are past their prime, and the regrets and longings they have--that would have been something unique. (I'm thinking something along the lines of Lester's ROBIN AND MARIAN.) But it appears that the money men behind RETURN wanted something entertaining and lighthearted, basically more of the first two films. Roy Kinnear's on-set death has given THE RETURN OF THE MUSKETEERS an unsavory reputation, but I don't think it's a film that should be put on the shelf.