Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

grantss Ten years after the fourth and final Blackadder TV series, we have this, a one-off Blackadder TV movie. Not as good as the TV series, but still fairly hilarious. The writing isn't as clever or the dialogue as biting as before and the plot relies on hijinks too much.Still, quite entertaining and worth the watch.

Edwardcole I was fortunate enough to have visited London in 2000, and was able to appreciate this special in its original context, namely in a theater just outside the Millennium Dome with a bunch of primary school children talking all the way through it and giggling for nearly two minutes at the sight of Tony Robinson's buttocks. It took a few years for it to come out on DVD, but it was worth the wait. DVD extras include a documentary on the making of the special, which includes several deleted scenes, and a Tony Robinson-narrated profile on several of the historical figures mentioned. I would highly recommend that anyone watch the other four Blackadder series prior to watching this, or a lot of the jokes will be missed. It also helps to appreciate the characters in their proper context. For example, Rik Mayall completely overacts as Robin Hood, but in the context of the series, he is supposed to overact. If you had not seen his performances as Lord Flasheart, you would think he was too over the top, but having seen it, it makes his performance here even funnier. Just like any other Rowan Atkinson project, if you give him a good script and top-notch characters to work with, he will do a brilliant job and make the program memorable. All of the characters did a solid job, although Kate Moss seemed a bit out of place, possibly because she was a bit out of place. She was never in any of the previous series. And the ending, while I won't give anything away, provided one of the biggest laughs I ever had with anything Blackadder, and that is really saying something.

didi-5 This short reformation of the Blackadder gang came ten years after the final series, and was put together to run in the ill-fated Millennium Dome, that Greenwich white elephant opened to celebrate the arrival of the 21st century.Blackadder has built a 'time machine' which he has put together to impress his appalling dinner guests. Taking Baldrick with him he plans to bring back an array of disgusting items to prove he's been away - of course, it is initially a scam, but ...Through their time travel, our heroes manage to change the course of history in more than one epoch - Edmund steals Maid Marian from Robin Hood (an OTT Rik Mayall with more than a whiff of Flashheart about him); he convinces Shakespeare - a morose Colin Firth - not to be a writer (and punches him for all the boring plays he wrote); he causes Napoleon to have slightly different fortunes than history dictated (Napoleon played by the stage actor Simon Russell Beale); and so on.All the usual cast are back - alongside Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson there's Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry, Tim McInnerny, and Hugh Laurie. There are in-jokes, too - Jennie Bond appears in her guise as Royal Reporter, but in a different era (just as Vincent Hanna did election reporting for Baldrick v William Pitt the Even Younger in Blackadder the Third).Overall, though, this short episode is a bit sparse on ideas, and feels strained. After the long wait, and the long build-up, it was just disappointing when it finally appeared.

JasonLeeSmith I've come to this conclusion about Rowan Atkinson: Unless he is doing physical humor in roles like Mr Bean, he definately needs an audience to react to. Here I am assuming that the original Black Adder and Not the Nine O'Clock News series were filmed before an audience. There is something about his film roles which is a little too slick, his delivery and timing suffers.As such, "Black Adder Back and Forth," is not a success. Its done entirely on film, unlike the original Black Adder, and also unlike the original it has a much bigger budget -- or, I should say, it has a budget. When you see it, you are filled with frustration as lines which are funny, which should have been funny, are bulldozed through. Without having to wait for audience laughter, there's not enough pause to let the joke sink in. You basically just get this vague impression that something funny happened, "Oh yes, this is a joke, ha, ha." This is a pity, as the material is just as funny as usual.Also, you get the impression that they were trying to make a series out of it, but in the end, just settled on editting it all together for a movie, so in a lot of ways it feels rushed. Finally, in listening to the interviews with the writers about the material, you can't help but feeling the Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, now that they have moved on to bigger and better things, have nothing but contempt for the material that they were working with. As such, the whole movie seems a little bit nastier than the previous series.