For our friend/former roommate M's birthday last weekend he decided to host a screening of the recent two-part Three Musketeers film adaptation, D'Artagnan and Milady.

Apparently this is the first French film adaptation in sixty years?! (which I did not know before looking at the Wikipedia just now) and I think we all had a vague conception that, being French, it was likelier to be moderately book-accurate than the run of modern English film adaptations. As it turns out this was foolish and prejudiced of us. French directors have just as much fun picking and choosing their favorite bits of The Three Musketeers and jettisoning the rest as anybody else.

That said: I think most of the changes are quite fun and interesting! Perhaps most notably, this is the most successful Milady Positive Musketeers adaptation that I've yet encountered. At least 50% of the plot changes are in service of ensuring that the Musketeers continue to see Milady as a primary antagonist while ensuring that we-the-viewers are tilting our heads like 'hmm ... but is she though ......'

Case in point: the biggest plot change is that suddenly we are very concerned about Huguenots. Athos now comes from a Protestant family and has an ardent Huguenot brother who is on the other side in La Rochelle; meanwhile the whole conflict is being escalated by Gaston of Orléans, who's the real villain of the piece. Why does Gaston of Orléans need to be the real villain of the piece? So that by comparison Cardinal Richelieu is not so bad, so that the schemes on which he's sending Milady are really not so bad, so actually --

( more Milady changes, big spoilers )

The other two biggest plot changes are also very funny to me .... one is that the creative team were like "what do Porthos and Aramis have going on with the Milady plot? Well ... nothing really. So instead we are going to give them a comic b-plot about finding which hot soldier knocked up Aramis' feisty sister. Since when does Aramis have a feisty sister SINCE NOW." ( more spoilers )

The other is that midway through movie two they slide in a new semi-historical OC (semi-historical because he's based on this guy but sixty years too early) who immediately steals the show in every possible way; he drops the best one-liners in the film, saunters casually in to save the Musketeer's asses on at least two different occasions, and is also the hottest man on the screen. To be clear I love this, big ups to the New Improved Musketeer, absolutely in the spirit of Dumas Pere. It did not at all shock me to learn that the creative team were now angling to make a TV show with this guy as the lead. I hope it succeeds because I'd watch the hell out of it.

Other notes: the costuming is very brown in the way that is clearly intended to shout "historical accuracy!" while demonstrating the exact opposite. One of the friends attendant at the party is a historical costume hobbyist and she spent the whole evening glowering at the screen muttering 'where is everyone's LACE?' And then every so often someone would show up with a plasticky lace border around their neckline and we'd all shout 'LOOK! LACE!' which strangely did not soothe her.

ON the other hand, at one point a character in a fraught chase sequence is shown actually changing horses, which so delighted the horse-knowers among us that they immediately forgave Eva Green every implausible corset lugged straight off the set of Penny Dreadful.

On the third hand: no valets. WHEN will someone make a Three Musketeers adaptation with vales?