The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)
Last Watch Date - February 3, 2024
Total Times Watched - Once
Comments
What happens when you are looking for a movie and your wife says "Oh I remember that one being really good" – especially when it has Leonardo DiCaprio in it from when he was younger? But hold on, it's not only a Leo movie, but a Three Musketeers movie! Swashbuckling, adventure, intrigue!
If you only look at the cast of this movie, you're going to have pretty lofty expectations. Jeremy Irons, Gabriel Byrne, Gerard Depardieu, John Malkovich. That's pretty intense! When you start watching it, you'll think "oh they're going with British accents, that makes sense for a historical movie despite it being in France" because that's how movies work in English. But then Depardieu pops on in a French accent. Oh, I guess they're doing French accents for some? And then Leo and co pop in with American accents. I guess they're just saying "hey forget bothering with any sense of coherence and do whatever you want." John Malkovich may be the worst offender of this.
It's not merely the accents that are horrible. There is awful, regional theater acting across the board in this movie. The only ones who are consistent in their characters are Byrne, Irons, and Depardieu. The problem is that Byrne is one-dimensional, Irons has terrible dialogue, and Depardieu plays a comic relief sort of character. Everyone else in this movie feels off in a way – some horrifically while others only subtly.
Some of this comes down to the fact that this script doesn't know what it wants to do with itself. Is this a comedy? A slapstick adventure? A swashbuckler? A political intrigue? Is it an episode from Xena? Everything in it feels so unnatural and skimmed over that you get the sense that it was put together by a committee who had nearly no common ground.
But back to Xena really quickly – the props, sets, and costumes felt right out of those corny 90s TV shows like Xena and Hercules. Unforgivably bad beards and hair, run of the mill costumes, and even the "fancy" dress of the ball scenes were not good. Their research budget must've been $30. Or maybe their wardrobe and set design budgets were that. The music matches the ridiculous scenes. At times it sounds like it's straight out of the Shire where it should be dark and brooding, while others it sounds like children's programming background music when it should be sophisticated. It's terrible.
Sometimes when you watch a movie like this, it can be oddly endearing, despite all of the many warts. This movie is not, though. I did laugh out loud at it. Multiple times! But only at parts where it was trying to be serious. The acting and dialogue are so bad that you can't help yourself. And while I'm a fan of the books with D'Artagnan and co, this movie is a total miss. It doesn't feel like a Musketeers movie despite featuring them so prominently. It feels more like a high school project with a ragtag group of friends who wanted to try their hand at acting but were too self-conscious when the cameras started rolling to put themselves into the character.
Recommended?
Obviously not. Unless you were a youth when Leo was and you want to relive that for five minutes before saying "no really we can turn it off, this is bad" and your husband is like "YOU PICKED THIS, NOW YOU WILL SUFFER THE REST OF IT."
