"The Three Musketeers" will be a movie, again; it will have four musketeers, of course, and they will have swords, not muskets. Variety is calling it a "reboot," a word now applied to any remake, I guess. Like a balky PC running off demagnetized floppies, they've tried rebooting with little success before: There we as 1998 version, "The Man in the Iron Mask," with actual grownups as Musketeers - Jeremy Irons, John Malkevitch, Gerard Depardieu, and Jim Carrey. No, just seeing if you're paying attention. Gabriel Byrne played D'Artagnan.

The previous 1993 version had Keifer Sutherland and Charlie Sheen, because the world demanded to see the Brat Pack take on Cardinal Richelieu; before that, a highly-regarded version with Raquel Welch and Charlton Heston, with a script by "Flashman" author George MacDonald Fraser. A recent viewing did not suggest it's held up well, but it may have been my problem, not the movie's.

If they did it "Silverado" style - sending up the genre while giving us each and every cliche done as well as it could possibly be done - it might be fun. Keep in mind there's a competing Musketeer flick in the works, with Paul W.S. Anderson directing. It will be 3-D. The Three-D Musketeers! Expect lots of rapier-thrusting in your general direction.

Wonder who they'll cast this time. It's a given that James Cromwell will play Richelieu, since he's the go-to guy for ice-blooded authority figures long-gone down the road of corruption. If they remade "Babe" now, he'd be the guy selling the piglet to the slaughterhouse. Which he was anyway, I guess, but you know what I mean.