Here is a two-and-a-half hour cliche out of Hollywood, and it's in technicolor. Everything breathtaking that has ever been done before pops up in it sooner or later. But "The Three Musketeers" goes to such ludicrous extremes that it is hilarious. Every time something violent is about to come off, a short effective thunderstorm bursts upon the scene. The heroes are always smiling, and the villains always scowl. Nary a musketeer is scratched, while red-coated fiends are run through by the score. This all sounds tiresome, but the players operate with such incredible gusto that the whole affair becomes a delightful burlesque.

Alexander Dumas would smile at his characters in this gem: they are all as he would have them, exceptionally good or horrendously evil. Vincent Price as Richelieu is oily and sinister, with just a dash of greed. Frank Morgan as Louis XIII is weak and vacillating. The heroine is June Allyson, who is totally incapable of portraying anyone not pure and naive. Lana Turner plays Lady de Winter, the cruel, unscrupulous femme fatale; she is grotesquely miscast, but retains a certain innate charm.

And Gene Kelly is D'Artagnan, and what a D'Artagnan! He calmly scales a castle rampart at night, casually rips down whole sets of draperies with a flick of his wrist, hefts a 500-pound bronze statue and chucks it at half a dozen charging varlets--and then springs up a tavern wall to help a friend in danger. In the arms of evil Lady de Turner, he shows that he's just a simple country boy at heart.

Maybe MGM was only fooling, and really trying to prove that super-swashbuckling is a superb form of screen humor. And yet there are some dreadful little moments, when the actors suddenly become deadpan, straining to get a dull point across. But these scenes are few, and fairly short. When they intrude, just think back a piece and remember D'Artagnan as he points his poinard to the sky and shouts "All for one!" and his comrades raise their rapiers and reply, "AND ONE FOR ALL!"

To horse, O musketeers, or the enemies of the King will do him in!