‘Three Musketeers 3-D’ is all for none

‘The Three Musketeers 3-D’ could have been written by a 12-year-old boy.

You can almost hear an excited kid rapidly explaining some of the plot points, like, “And then, they jumped on the flying ship, and shot the flame thrower at Orlando Bloom, and it was, like, BOOM! And then, and then they used the cannonball machine gun, and the fat guy got poop on his face, but the lady takes off her dress and jumps off the castle, but she’s OK because she’s got a rope in her undies, and then the sword flies at the screen.”

Sadly, no, this movie was actually written and directed by adults. Director Paul W.S. Anderson’s (“Resident Evil: Afterlife”) Ritalin-induced vision is, perhaps, the strangest take on Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale yet. It’s also one of the shoddiest.

Anderson has crafted a swashbuckling adventure for the short attention span crowd, which might appreciate the action, but still wonder what the hell a flying ship is doing in a “Three Musketeers” movie.

Though its presentation is slick, “Three Musketeers 3-D” is riddled with poor dialogue, one-dimensional characters (three of which technically amount to 3-D) and a Jerry Bruckheimer-ish plot that would make Optimus Prime feel at home in 17-century France.

Athos (Matthew Macfayden, “Robin Hood”), Aramis (Luke Evans, “Clash of the Titans”) and Porthos (Ray Stevenson, HBO’s “Rome”) are the Three Musketeers, secret agents of King Louis XIII (Freddie Fox, “Worried About the Boy”).

On a mission in Venice to acquire schematics from Leonardo Da Vinci’s secret vault, they’re betrayed by seductress and spy extraordinaire Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich, “The Fifth Element”), which sets in motion a series of ridiculous events that could spell doom for France.

As Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”) seeks to steal the throne, the musketeers are all but disbanded, until they meet young, mop-headed D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman, “Gamer”). Handling himself in a fight with the cardinal’s henchmen, he’s welcomed by the trio and becomes an honorary Mousketeer, err, musketeer.

Meanwhile, Milady de Winter, while not contorting and making strange faces in tired slow motion (per Anderson’s Jovovich fetish), is playing the double agent card, also working with the smarmy Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom, “The Lord of the Rings), who uses Da Vinci’s schematics to craft a flying ship that could, obviously, change the face of warfare.

It’s pretty darn absurd. Like passing a clown-car wreck, you can’t look away, just wondering what zaniness is going to stumble out of the wreckage and throw pie in your face. Turns out it’s the setup for a sequel. I’d settle for the pie.

“The Three Musketeers 3-D,” rated PG-13 for sequences of adventure action violence, is playing at Regal Cinema 7 in Boone. For show times, see page 12 or visit http://www.mountaintimes.com/movies.