Friday, August 5, 2011

Quick Reviews: The Three Musketeers (1939), Devotion (1945)

"THE THREE MUSKETEERS" (1939)
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Alexandre Dumas fans stay away, this farcical, loosely-based adaptation takes great liberties with the source material in favor of some playful hi-jinks and merry melodies, turning the classic story into a 73-minute quasi-musical comedy. 
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The results aren't entirely amiss, however, as the film's brisk, trim physique and Ritz brothers buffoonery provide enough of a good thing to justify this altered, dumbed-down version. Still, it doesn't measure up to the ultimately straight-faced, superior 1948 MGM mega-production. [B-]
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"DEVOTION" (1945)
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Hardly the blistering melodrama the poster would have you believe, this Warner Bros. period piece very loosely based on the lives of the Bronte sisters was famously released three years after production while an ongoing legal battle with star Olivia de Havilland resolved itself. 
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Fatuously written with plenty of unsubtle hints as to the genesis of the sisters' renowned literary works to come, the film nevertheless has stretches of compelling love-on-the-moors histrionics. [C+]

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