Some aspects of this movie are alright, the story, sort of, and a lot of the acting, however where it really falls down is with it's overt use of slapstick. Each slapstick moment is almost 'Carry on' in nature, maybe, however everything else around it just doesn't link in with it.
Maybe the director didn't think the writing itself contained to few moments of amusing dialogue, and decided to opt for visual gags, however they all land really badly.
In some ways you could get away with fanediting out the vast majority of the slapstick, with some difficulty around a scene in which Kim Catrall flees the muskateers, which is entirely slapstick inside of an Alton Towers style fun house, which would serve to remove that aspect of story. Actually there are probably a far too many stupid bits in it.
I also have an issue with accents throughout. Had the story remained in France, I could have coped with the vast majoriy of English accents playing French characters, however they pop over to England, at which time there's no attempts to strike an kind of cultural contrast. I think they did something similar previously. In any case I think there should have been some effort to perhaps exagerate the English bits, to provide some contrast to the non-French French characters. They do occasionally throw in a mock French accent, however only to mock certain character types, rather than really set the scene.
Without the slap stick nonsence it might have at least worked reasonably well, as a follow up to the previous movies, however this movie just didn't manage to pull all it's pieces together.
Traumatic experience for the whole team though, with Roy Kinnear passing away almost imediately following a horrible accident (forced to perform his own stunts on horseback - as far as I've read), which may have served to remove any passion for the project that may have been present prior to the incident.
Could have been better, and in many ways it looks as though the intentions to competently pull it off were there, at least in some areas of the film, however appears to have just flatlined in the wake of the accident, going on to affect the entire movie.
Maybe the director didn't think the writing itself contained to few moments of amusing dialogue, and decided to opt for visual gags, however they all land really badly.
In some ways you could get away with fanediting out the vast majority of the slapstick, with some difficulty around a scene in which Kim Catrall flees the muskateers, which is entirely slapstick inside of an Alton Towers style fun house, which would serve to remove that aspect of story. Actually there are probably a far too many stupid bits in it.
I also have an issue with accents throughout. Had the story remained in France, I could have coped with the vast majoriy of English accents playing French characters, however they pop over to England, at which time there's no attempts to strike an kind of cultural contrast. I think they did something similar previously. In any case I think there should have been some effort to perhaps exagerate the English bits, to provide some contrast to the non-French French characters. They do occasionally throw in a mock French accent, however only to mock certain character types, rather than really set the scene.
Without the slap stick nonsence it might have at least worked reasonably well, as a follow up to the previous movies, however this movie just didn't manage to pull all it's pieces together.
Traumatic experience for the whole team though, with Roy Kinnear passing away almost imediately following a horrible accident (forced to perform his own stunts on horseback - as far as I've read), which may have served to remove any passion for the project that may have been present prior to the incident.
Could have been better, and in many ways it looks as though the intentions to competently pull it off were there, at least in some areas of the film, however appears to have just flatlined in the wake of the accident, going on to affect the entire movie.