D'Artagnan et les trois mousquetaires

I have fond memories of the animated TV series "Dogtanian", which was dubbed into Portuguese in my country, and which I remember as being one of my favorite cartoons when I was a child, and one of the best before the "anime" invasion from Japan. Of course, digital animation has replaced the classic authenticity of old-school animation, which I partly regret.

The film harmonizes well two difficult-to-reconcile terrains: the original animation from the 90s, which had its own original stories, and the plot that Dumas wrote in "The Three Musketeers" more than a century ago. The credit goes to the screenwriter, Doug Langdale, who wanted to take advantage of the original story by applying it to the characters from the cartoon, thus creating a film that would easily please fans of the cartoon and those who enjoyed the original book.

There's not much to say about the technical quality of the cartoon, which uses decent CGI for animations. I haven't heard the original version, but the version that was dubbed into Portuguese from Portugal, so I can't evaluate the original voices. The version I heard is enjoyable and does full justice to the original animations. I think I recognized José Raposo's voice and Vasco Palmeirim's voice, but I could be wrong.

I took my kids to see this at the cinema, having never seen the original. The animation quality was poor especially considering it was shown in the cinema. The language they used to tell the story went straight over my kids' heads so it was difficult for them to follow and most of the characters lacked personality. We were all utterly bored and glad when it was over.

In 17th century France, young D'Artacan (or Dogtanian) travels to Paris to fulfill his ambition to become one of the King's Musketeers. He befriends Athos, Porthos and Aramis and falls in love with Juliette. Stars hot-headed D'Artacan (D'Artagnan) in a brave role as a young and handsome dog of fortune, a dashing , audacious lover and nimble athlete. D'Artacan and the three musketeers or muskehounds must defeat a beautiful double agent and her villainous employer from seizing the French throne and engulfing Europe in war. This delightful adaptation based on Alexandre Dumas classic novel starts with the youngster D'Artacan who arrives in Paris to find Mister Treville , chief of Musketeers. But he meets with three two-fisted Musketeers , rollicking adventurers , fighting to live and living to love and they dared a thousand perils. Fearing that D'Artacán reports the king, Richelieu orders Rochefort and his particular guards to kill him, making that D'Artacán, Amis, Dogos and Ponthos leave his misunderstanding behind to fight together. D'Artacan to be aware they are Musketeers and is invited to unite them in their objective to struggle against guards of Cardinal Richelieu, Rochefort and the astute Milady De Winter who is lovely as a jewel, deadly as a dagger the wickedest woman in all Christendom . Meanwhile, D'Artacan falls in love with a gorgeous young, Juliette, she is a golden-haired beauty entangled in a web of treachery and intrigue. Furthermore , there is developed an intrigue between Luis XIII, Queen Anne of Austria, Duke of Buckingha ; and of course, the nasty Richelieu, as evil as ever . The musketeers join forces for royal vengeance with the shout : ¨One for all and all for one¨

The Dog Knight(2021) professionally directed by Toni Garcia, Stephen Hughes results to be a slight an likeable retelling about the durable Alexandre Dumas's novel. An amusing and colorful adaptation set in Paris, circa 1625, a brave puppy helps three sword dogs in their fight against the king's enemies while falling in love with Julietta. So they have to recover a valuable necklace that the evil Milady de Winter has stolen. And they join forces to avoid a plan about topple Luis XIII as part of powerful and cruel Cardinal Richelieu's masterplan to unleash the war against England. The 3D animation is good but it's nothing special. A vein of humour is evident here, especialy bit the mouseThe troublesome mouse that always accompanies Dartacan who usually helps or betrays him . Here the comic and ironic tones are increased, though sometimes falling flat. For this movie itself , though , energetic and frantic are the best adjectives you could think of to describe its attraction. The characters are more cuddly than daring, as they were in the books. D'Artacan is still feisty and headstrong but as this is a children's cartoon they had to remove his amourous nature. The characters more or less follow the traditional cannon, adapted a thousand times to the big screen and television.

This classy story is adapted on several versions , firstly take on about this classic is the following : 1921 silent version by Fred Niblo with Douglas Fairbanks and going on the 1935 adaptation by Rowland V Lee with Walter Abel and Paul Lukas ; 1973 amusing version by Richard Lester with Michael York, Oliver Reed , Raquel Welch and Charlton Heston as Richelieu ; The Three Musketeers (1993) by Stephen Herek with Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris O'Donnell, Oliver Platt ; 2001 rendition by Peter Hyams with Justin Chambers, Mena Suvari and Tim Roth. And , of course, the classic series in animated cartoon: D'Artacan y los tres mosqueperros (26 episodes, 1981-1982).

As a watcher of the TV series, I watched this with interest to see what was better/worse than it.

First of all, the new CGI animation was good. Not exactly Disney quality, but when you can count the amount of wrinkles on the end of a dog's nose, I'm officially impressed.

I was also pleased with the way the characters were portrayed. Not just Dogtanian and the musketeers, but other underwritten characters from the show like Milady and Juliet get more to do here and have noticeably stronger personalities.

Even Pip, who annoyed me immensely in the original because he always seemed so out of place, actually has a place and a reason for existing. And when the film actually got me to LIKE him, you know it's doing something right.

On the downside, there is a pretty awful love song here which fortunately isn't on for very long (unless you want to torture yourself by staying through the credits). And the plot structure is very predictable, especially if you've already sat through other iterations of this oft-told tale before.

Still, those are minor quibbles in the great scheme of things. This film surpassed all my expectations, and I recommend it mostly for fans of the old show (you may even spot a few tributes to it, if you keep your eyes peeled). Who knows, maybe even your kids will like it too... ;) 6/10.

The voice acting and dialogue are clumsy, the animation is cheap, and the overall production is cheap. Any other version of this story would be better.