Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers

(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers. "Orpheus in the Underworld - Overture" by Jacques Offenbach plays in the background. Note: That song is heard and performed several times in the movie itself)

Doug (vo): Mickey Mouse and the Three Musketeers; that is pretty much exactly what you get.

Story and review

Doug (vo): Mickey, Donald and Goofy all going off to save Princess Minnie so that evil Captain Pete can't take over the crown. Yes, somehow, kidnapping her makes him king. This isn't really story-based. The plot is...wait, no. That was pretty much it. Yeah, it's about as generic and old-fashioned a cartoon plot for kids goes. So is it any good? I...well...it's hard to pick on something that's obviously meant for, like, little, little kids. I mean, it's a Mickey Mouse direct-to-DVD movie. What do you expect?

(Several images of Mickey Mouse's past film appearances are shown)

Doug (vo): Oh, but again, I guess that's not fair. Mickey's been in some really good stuff. There was a great short he was in called The Prince and the Pauper. Fantasia is a masterpiece. Even that Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas had a lot of charm to it. This I don't really describe as having a lot of charm, but it's...harmless.

(Several characters in the film are shown)

Doug (vo): Every character and motivation is exactly what you think it's gonna be. Mickey's optimistic, but he dreams of being a Mouseketeer. (Sighs) Did I really just say that? You know what I mean. Goofy is a doofus, but he wants to apply his brain. Donald is a coward, and wants to learn how to be brave. And Minnie is a princess, so, of course, she wants to fall in love. There is nothing new or original in this. Even the songs are classical public domain tunes that they just put lyrics to. Some of them already had lyrics, they just have new ones. I guess it's good this teaches kids classical music, but it's music you're gonna hear everywhere anyway, and...I don't know. The animation is clearly trying, and the backgrounds are clearly trying, but nothing really stands out as...great. Everybody does exactly what you think they'd do, everyone reacts exactly how you think they'd react. So why doesn't this work as well as, say, the Buzz Lightyear cartoon? Well, that one still threw in some good laughs, and it was creative, it had kind of a goofy story, but it also had some imagination to it.

(Clips focusing on the film's opening scene are shown)

Doug (vo): The best way I can describe this one is by looking at the opening and closing credits. You see this comic strip style? This was very popular back in the day. In fact, these Mickey Mouse comics are kind of these rarities. They're seen as this pure, innocent artwork of more simple times. They didn't have much depth. In fact, they had virtually no depth. But they were so simple and colorful that kids really loved it and it sort of carried over for some adults.

Final thought

Doug (vo): This is pretty much the same thing. It's innocent, it's harmless, but I don't really see any reason to watch it either. It's fine for kids, I guess, but aside from the smoothness of the animation and some of the backgrounds, nothing really screams "Disney, top of the game". But again, it's a direct-to-DVD Mickey Mouse movie, but again, more effort has been put into those in the past, but again, it's not like no effort was put into this, but...oh. I'm probably making it more complicated than it needs to be. If you're an adult, it's unlikely you'll get into it at all. But if you're a little, little kid that just wants to see Mickey Mouse go on an adventure, it's energized, colorful and harmless. Don't expect anything great, but honestly, you probably weren't anyway. You're probably just expecting a Mickey Mouse cartoon, and that's what you get, a really long Mickey Mouse cartoon. Fine for little boys and girls, but that's really about it. It's all for one, and one for...eh.

(The final scene of the movie, showing the main trio dancing and singing with the Musketeers, is shown)