It doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to crap on this offering from our good friends at The Asylum, my friends. I mean, I could… director Cole S. McKay’s film does commit numerous felonies against the art of filmmaking that someone who doesn’t watch a lot of these types movies might find unconscionable, but his ‘3 Musketeers’ has so much energy, and is so ambitious, and so completely and utterly ridiculous, that we got swept away by the spectacle of it all. A little bit. Gotta throw a disclaimer in there just in case somebody VOD’s this movie, hates it and wants to blame me. Don’t blame me Bro.

Athos (Xin) – kung fu master, Porthos (Keith Allen) – tech guy and Aramis (Michele Boyd) – sexy minx… secret agents known as the 3 Musketeers. Not The Three Musketeers because then you’d have to scroll all the way down to the T’s before you got to it on your VOD search page and you might lose your way, so we got it keep up high. I’m just glad The Asylum didn’t call it ‘2012: The 3 Musketeers’, because they would do it. Anyway, these musketeers aren’t fighting for the French, but for America, and on this day they are in Commie North Korea trying to disable their illegal nuke program. I think. Damn if this op wasn’t a complete setup, enacted by their handler known to them as ‘The Cardinal’ (Alan Rachins), and one passenger jet blown out the sky later, the Musketeers are on the run and America is on the verge of World War III.

Back stateside we get to meet the absolute cutest CIA agent you will ever want to see in the ambitious Alexandra D’ Artangan (Heather Hemmens). Alexandra is a master fencer, just like her boss CIA chief General Richard Lewis (David Chokachi), who we could call Rochefort but they didn’t give him that name for some reason. I wonder will these two have a fence off somewhere down the line? Alexandra wants to get in on the action, the general advises her to stand down and wait her turn, then her colleague passes her some intel on some crackpot talking crazy about some nonsense. Note that this colleague of hers is played Asylum regular Gerald Webb who I believe has been slaughtered in every single Asylum film I’ve seen him in. Hope he makes it this time.

This crackpot, played by the legendary Stephen Williams, passes Alexandra a thumb drive that contains critical info about the Cardinal’s plan to start WWIII, and while you might ask why this clown gave this earth critical info to a junior agent just out of high

school, you shouldn’t do that. Asking questions like that while watching a movie like this is just silly. Say goodbye to Stephen Williams and his glorified cameo as Alexandra has to track down the shamed super agents, get them to reunite and hopefully save millions of lives.

The plan of our bad guys is to bring back The Republic, or something, and their plan to make this happen is a nefarious one. Plus The Cardinal has the Rougeketeers on his side, agents that can do everything our musketeers can do, just with no conscious. Alexandra, also on the run right now, needs help in addition to the musketeers to stop this insanity, she needs to call somebody back at home base. Just don’t call that dude that Gerald Webb is playing… don’t call him…. Damn, she’d called him. Oh well, moving along…

The situation is dire, the musketeers are grossly outnumbered, world peace and the life of the Commander in Chief is in the balance unless Alexandra D’Artagnan can do something about it. Uh… why does The President have a pair of fencing foils in his bunker? Anybody? Anybody? I know, follow your own advice and don’t ask such silly questions. Somebody roll the credits please.

Even though I imagine this movie is mockbusting Paul W.S. Anderson’s ‘The Three Musketeers’, which in all honesty was pretty damned awful and probably didn’t deserve a mock busting, but because of the theme of this movie The Asylum probably would’ve been better served waiting about a month and mockbusting Tom Cruise’s new ‘Mission Impossible’ movie. This is almost perfect for that, plus with a title tweak, say like ‘1 Impossible Mission’, viola! We got ourselves a brand new mockbuster. Still these guys won’t offer me job. What is up with that?

But what can we say about ‘3 Musketeers’? It has its challenges to be certain as every once in a while it looks like there’s a scene missing since my orientation as to how certain characters ended up in certain places was confusing at times, some of our musketeers seemed to struggle on occasion with the complex craft of acting, and the story supporting this uncontrolled nonsense was ludicrous defined, but this ridiculous story is also part of this movies charm. One would think flying aircraft in and out of North Korea would be just a little more difficult than it was here, and one would think that The President would have a slightly less incompetent security detail by his side. But all of that stuff, and so much more, was far more funny than it was offensive. There’s Xin as Athos who is one back flipping fool. This cat flipped everywhere. You ask Athos to pass the sugar, this man’s gonna flip over the table, on top of the cabinet, the backflip back to the table with sugar in hand. That’s awesome. The action, suspect as it was at times, was almost non-stop with explosions, shootouts and CGI helicopter / drone chases galore, the acting veterans in this cast, that being Chokachi, Williams and Rachins took this thing deadly serious, Keith Allen provided some semi-solid comic relief and Heather Hemmens is an absolutely adorable girl. Made for a much better D’Artagnan than that boy they had in that bigger, slicker, better produced but less entertaining movie.

Remember, you have to actually watch these kinds of movies to appreciate these kind of movies. I know I shouldn’t have to qualify myself on these decisions, but I’m doing it anyway, just this one time. But the foils in the bunker… it’s still kind messing with me.