D'Artacán y los tres mosqueperros

I have fond memories of the animated TV series "Dogtanian", which was dubbed into Portuguese in my country, and which I remember as being one of my favorite cartoons when I was a child, and one of the best before the "anime" invasion from Japan. Of course, digital animation has replaced the classic authenticity of old-school animation, which I partly regret.

The film harmonizes well two difficult-to-reconcile terrains: the original animation from the 90s, which had its own original stories, and the plot that Dumas wrote in "The Three Musketeers" more than a century ago. The credit goes to the screenwriter, Doug Langdale, who wanted to take advantage of the original story by applying it to the characters from the cartoon, thus creating a film that would easily please fans of the cartoon and those who enjoyed the original book.

There's not much to say about the technical quality of the cartoon, which uses decent CGI for animations. I haven't heard the original version, but the version that was dubbed into Portuguese from Portugal, so I can't evaluate the original voices. The version I heard is enjoyable and does full justice to the original animations. I think I recognized José Raposo's voice and Vasco Palmeirim's voice, but I could be wrong.

As a watcher of the TV series, I watched this with interest to see what was better/worse than it.

First of all, the new CGI animation was good. Not exactly Disney quality, but when you can count the amount of wrinkles on the end of a dog's nose, I'm officially impressed.

I was also pleased with the way the characters were portrayed. Not just Dogtanian and the musketeers, but other underwritten characters from the show like Milady and Juliet get more to do here and have noticeably stronger personalities.

Even Pip, who annoyed me immensely in the original because he always seemed so out of place, actually has a place and a reason for existing. And when the film actually got me to LIKE him, you know it's doing something right.

On the downside, there is a pretty awful love song here which fortunately isn't on for very long (unless you want to torture yourself by staying through the credits). And the plot structure is very predictable, especially if you've already sat through other iterations of this oft-told tale before.

Still, those are minor quibbles in the great scheme of things. This film surpassed all my expectations, and I recommend it mostly for fans of the old show (you may even spot a few tributes to it, if you keep your eyes peeled). Who knows, maybe even your kids will like it too... ;) 6/10.

It must be difficult to remake something for the modern age something that was produced 40 years ago with the common techniques, styles of the times and for the typical audience. The world has moved on, the risk is to make something new for the modern audience that the older audience will hate. This film has done a remake but with a nods to the classic. The 1980's version was a version the classic Dumas story made child friendly at the time, and this it what they have done again for a more modern audience. If you are a fan of the original look out for the dream sequences and watch all the credits at the end there will be things very familiar. If you are too young to remember the original take your kids for a treat and hopefully it will get them into reading books, as that was the effect it had on my back in the 1980's last time round.

Lets hope that Apolo films get funding for remaking some of the other BRB classics.

I took my kids to see this at the cinema, having never seen the original. The animation quality was poor especially considering it was shown in the cinema. The language they used to tell the story went straight over my kids' heads so it was difficult for them to follow and most of the characters lacked personality. We were all utterly bored and glad when it was over.

First off I've no idea who is giving this film high scores but their reviews seem to indicate they've not actually seen the film.

We have regular 'cinema nights' with the kids (6 and 10) and when Dogtanian came up on Sky Cinema I thought it would be right down our street as I loved the animation as a child.

First off, this film is 1hr45 long, longer than Frozen yet or needed a good 45-50 mins shaved off as it has so many pointless bits which don't add anything other than boring bulk.

The voice acting is awful, you can literally feel the actors struggling to read the script, adding pauses in strange places and mispronouncing words. The story is over complicated for children, quite boring and dull. There's a fart joke 5 minutes in and I'd argue that it was the peak of the film.

The animation is awful, so low budget, it's clear they spent all the money on the rights to a beloved cartoon and had little left. It looks like it was made on an old movie maker package on a 20 year old PC. There are two camera angles and that's your lot. It looks horrible (though the line art 'flashback' was nice and served only to show how rubbish the rest of the film was). It was so poor it distracted from what plot there was.

We turned the film off before the end, I have to admit it. I'm SO disappointed my favourite cartoon as a child has become this. The kids were FINE with us turning it off which I think says it all.

Save your time and watch the old cartoons on YouTube or just watch a different film altogether.