The film received generally mixed reviews from critics, who praised its musical numbers, action sequences, and faithfulness to the original material, but was critical on other aspects.
Plot
The film's story is a retelling of The Three Musketeers, narrated by the Troubadour, a French music-loving tortoise, who reads the tale from his comic book. The story takes place in 17th-century France, where four young street urchins, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Mickey's dog, Pluto, struggle to survive. One day, the four are harassed by the Beagle Boys before being saved by royal musketeers, who gift Mickey one of their hats, inspiring him and his friends to follow their example and become musketeers themselves.
Years later, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are employed as janitors at the musketeers' headquarters, headed by Captain Pete, who finds the trio unfit to be musketeers and secretly plots to overthrow Princess Minnie Mouse and become the King of France. After narrowly avoiding an assassination attempt by the Beagle Boys, who covertly work for Pete, Minnie demands that Pete hire musketeer bodyguards for her. Pete, realizing that hiring experienced musketeers would put his plan at risk, decides to give the job to Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, believing that they would be easy to get rid of.
While on a carriage ride with Minnie and her lady-in-waiting, Daisy Duck, Mickey, Donald and Goofy are ambushed by the Beagle Boys, who incapacitate the trio and kidnap Minnie and Daisy. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, refusing to give up, pursue the Beagle Boys to an abandoned tower, where they engage in another fight, which a frightened Donald quickly backs out of. Mickey and Goofy manage to defeat the Beagle Boys without Donald, and rescue Minnie and Daisy. Afterwards, Mickey and Minnie start a relationship.
Having learned of Mickey, Donald and Goofy's success, Pete decides to get rid of them individually. On the night of an opera, which Minnie and Daisy are attending, Goofy is lured away from the palace by Clarabelle Cow, Pete's lieutenant, while Donald is captured by the Beagle Boys during which he discovers Pete's plot and escapes back to the palace to warn Mickey before leaving him to get captured by Pete, who imprisons Mickey in a flooding dungeon at Mont Saint-Michel.
While Clarabelle attempts to drown Goofy in the Seine, she suddenly has a change of heart when the two fall in love. After Goofy learns from Clarabelle about Mickey's situation, he travels to the dungeon where Mickey is being held captive, accompanied by Pluto and an initially reluctant Donald, who soon becomes reinvigorated after the Troubadour berates him for his cowardice. Donald and Goofy manage to rescue Mickey before the group proceed on their mission to rescue the princess.
At Palais Garnier, where the opera is being held, Pete and the Beagle Boys capture Minnie and Daisy, with one of the Beagle Boys masquerading as Minnie to declare Pete as the new King of France. Soon, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy arrive, and after an epic battle onstage, they defeat Pete and his minions and rescue Minnie and Daisy, who profess their love to Mickey and Donald, respectively. Later, Minnie officially dubs Mickey, Donald, and Goofy as royal musketeers, fulfilling their dream.
An adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy as the Musketeers, was planned during the 1980s at Walt Disney Animation Studios. In 1983, storyboard artists Steve Hulett and Pete Young developed the project with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and José Carioca as the Musketeers, but it fell into development hell.[4] In 2002, in honor of Mickey Mouse's 75th anniversary, a featurette entitled The Search of Mickey Mouse was announced. The project was about Mickey who gets kidnapped by unknown forces, forcing Minnie Mouse to enlist Basil of Baker Street to investigate his disappearance, and later encounters one character from Disney's animated film canon such as Alice, Peter Pan, Robin Hood, and Aladdin.[5] The project suffered script problems with the multiple cameos being thought to be too gimmicky.[6] After the cancellation of the latter project, a feature film based on The Three Musketeers with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in the lead roles was greenlit instead, indicating that Hulett and Young's project had been revived but the film did not include José Carioca as in the early development.
Reception
Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers had a rating of 42% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 12 reviews with an average score of 4.84/10.[7]
Release
The film had a limited theatrical screening in El Capitan Theatre.[8]
The film was first released on DVD and VHS on August 17, 2004. At the time of release the three main characters appeared as costumed characters in Fantasyland at the Disney parks.[2][9] The DVD was the first to include Disney's FastPlay, which imitates VHS operation by starting play automatically rather than waiting at the main menu for user input.[10] For the film's 10th anniversary, it was released on Blu-ray on August 12, 2014.[3]
Video games
A world named Country of the Musketeers based on the film appears in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance.[11][12] This is the first time a world in the Kingdom Hearts series has originated from a direct-to-video feature.[13] Like the Timeless River world in Kingdom Hearts II, it is featured as a period of Mickey Mouse's past. All the characters except Daisy, Clarabelle, and the Troubadour appear.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for the film, titled Mickey, Donald & Goofy: The Three Musketeers, was released on August 13, 2004, by Walt Disney Records.[9] In addition to seven classical pieces reinterpreted with new comedic lyrics,[14] it also features a rewritten cover of the Schoolhouse Rock classic "Three Is a Magic Number" by Stevie Brock, Greg Raposo and Matt Ballinger.[9] In 2018, Mickey, Donald and Goofy: The Three Musketeers became the first direct-to-video Disney film to have its full musical score, released on CD by Intrada Records. Like the original album, Intrada's release includes all the songs from the film, though in this release, most of them are put together with the respective pieces of Bruce Broughton's background music that leads up to them. Some of the music cues include pieces of the score that ultimately went unused in the film. The "Three is a Magic Number" cover is also omitted this time.
