Rating: 
Summary: DISAPPOINTED
Review: I'm sorry to force my opinion on you but you must stay clear of this. It's really cringeworthy when you consider that the other four series (if you call this - a short, haphazard, rush job - a 'series') are all masterpieces. Ok, perhaps the first one is a flawed masterpiece. Nevertheless, it really was a moment of madness on the part of the writers and is as painful as seeing Mohammed Ali struggle to walk when he was once an irresistable fighter and statesman. So go buy the DVD Boxset instead of this lethargic, uninspired, hackneyed waste of time - I guarantee you'll have no regrets in doing so.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent nostalgia
Review: If you've seen all four BlackAdder series you might look at this film and think a few things. One: Some folks haven't aged well at all. Two: Wow, this is a little on the slow paced side. Three: This is pretty damn funny. Yes, it's the the best Blackadder effort (but then again it wasn't really meant to be), but it's fun. You find yourself remembering how funny the original series were and it makes you want to pull out your old tapes (yes I said tapes, I haven't gotten the dvds yet) and watch them. Remember whichever Blackadder you first started watching is no doubt your favorite. I've seen people recommending Blackadder III, but Blackadder II was my favorite, followed by I, III and IV. Viva le Blackadder!
Rating:
Summary: It couldn't be worse.
Review: It couldn't be worse. I mean that literally. That's not to say there isn't humor to be found here. In fact, my point is that this is, in fact, an occasionally amusing title. With this cast (Atkinson, Richardson, Laurie, Fry, McInnerny & Robinson) it can't help but have SOME laughs. But it could have been so much more. It's obvious that by the time they came to slap together this little 'help save the Millenium Dome' project, writers Richard Curtis and Ben Elton had simply lost touch with the Blackadder of old. The characters don't quite ring true (even ones they had played before) and the situations seem very un-Blackadderish (to invent a word). We never have time to really get to know these incarnations of the Blackadder crew. If this were a stand alone film, I don't see how anyone could have found these jokes even remotely funny without a knowledge of Blackadder beforehand? One of the great things about the old Blackadders is that, even if you'd never seen one before, every episode was funny in its own right. You didn't need to know that Baldrick's pants were a constant source of humor to find the jokes amusing. But here everything is referring to running gags of the old shows, without a solid base to the jokes themselves. Nothing stands on its own. I don't think you could ring six good episodes out of these characters if you tried. There's nothing to them, they are just shadows of their predecessors. Just like this show.
Rating:
Summary: All Blackadder fans - STAY AWAY
Review: There's nothing to see here, and what there is will put you off Blackadder forever. This...celeb cameo-athon was put together for the Millennium Dome - and boy does it show. There is no heart, no passion and most of all, no comedy in this extremely short film. How it can even be released as a stand-alone DVD is beyond me. Suffice to say, I have lost a little more respect for the previous shows through watching this. It retired young and really should have stayed in the shadows, Greta Garbo-style.
Rating: 
Summary: Black Humor - Masterful "Spoof" of Britain's Bad Ol' Days
Review: This is not another compiation of Black Adder TV Shows, but rather a special, one-off film, much in the tradition of BLACK ADDER'S A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Like the former, it takes the basic BLACK ADDER elements and uses them to its own purposes. If this were truly yet another set in the series of BLACK ADDER, we'd expect to see the familiar cast of characters put in a single time period for a few episodes of mirth in the context of that time. Instead, perhaps inspired by Rowan Atkinson's own trip in the Tardis, this is "Black Adder meets Doctor Who". The comedy, here, comes from sending Blackadder and Baldrick on a search for historical artifacts in a faulty time machine. As might be expected, they can't quite work the controls, so they go through the titular "back and forth" movements through time, meeting up with familiar faces from the series' (and Britain's) past. It's great fun--much, much better than A CHRISTMAS CAROL at making multiple time zones work. Heeding the rampant criticism of A CHRISTMAS CAROL's "future" scene, writers Curtis and Elton have Blackadder only barely venturing into the future, here. Happily, they place Blackadder firmly in the past, with a wider range of actual historical (or at least legendary) figures than ever before. Blackadder's sharp criticism of historical greats like Shakespeare, Wellington, and Robin Hood will leave you laughing. But the best part is perhaps the ending, which holds unique satisfaction for long-time BLACK ADDER fans Still, it's not a five-star effort. Just as in BLACK ADDER'S A CHRISTMAS CAROL, the need to visit all these time zones means that the characters along the way don't get the attention they deserve. Writers Curtis and Elton are guilty here of taking the easy historical joke from each time period and then running like hell. It's not a HUGE sin, because the jokes are very, very good--but there's nevertheless a sense that Curtis and Elton would've done better by simply choosing one epoch and staying there. Also, I think that while this filmed production has higher production values than its siblings, it's not necessarily the better for it. In particular, I would've traded all the sumptuous location shots for a studio audience. As a television series, Black Adder had a very syncopated, rhythmic prose; as a film, it's missing the punctuation of a studio audience's laughter. It's not just that it's minimally less enjoyable to watch without the laughter, it also affects the actors somewhat. In some scenes, the actors just slightly lack the timing and the energy they've had on other Black Adder projects. Laying these two objections to one side, however, you really should get this film. While I think some of its humor is vastly improved by having seen the television series--and even better enhanced by knowing some British history ---converts to the cult of The Black Adder could certainly do worse than to start here. Mr. Bean -- eeehm, Rowen Atkinson has done it again! A visual feast sure to keep your belly shaking with harty laughs! A five star delight!*****
Rating:
Summary: Not really that bad!
Review: This little film was never meant to be part of the series, but I think parts of it work quite nicely. Granted, you have to be familiar with the series to get any of! I think Tony Robinson comes off quite well as Baldrick in this one and he's the main reason I watch it! My only regret is that the film was obviously shot in widescreen (or at least Super35), based on the deleted scenes contained in the documentary. Why didn't they bother to present it that way on this DVD???
Rating: 
Summary: Pales only in comparison to what's gone before
Review: To be blunt, this is not nearly the best installment of the "Black Adder". Having said that, it was genuinely good fun and yet another fine display of the delightfully irreverent take on Britain's history that made "Black Adder" one of the greatest comedies to grace American TV. This special episode (allegedly the final one) was made in conjunction with the much-hyped 1999/2000 New Year's celebrations at Britain's Millennium Dome. The plot follows the latest descendant of the Black Adder clan in an attempt to win a bet involving (among other things) a fake time-machine and a pair of antique underwear. Much to everyone's surprise (especially Black Adder's), the time machine actually works and Black Adder and his ever-present servant Baldrick find themselves shooting back and forth through time. As they attempt to find their way home, the pair lands in periods ranging from the Dinosaur age to the Napoleonic Wars and even the court of Queen Elizabeth. The latter destination is especially significant, because it was also the site of much of the series' finest hours, "Black Adder II." Unfortunately, despite the presence of Miranda Richardson and Stephen Fry reprising their roles from the original series, this is actually the weakest part of the show. It feels forced as if the actors were straining to recreate what they once did intuitively. The program is on much better footing in other eras, such as an encounter with Robin Hood (played by occasional "Black Adder" guest Rik Mayall), where the actors seem to be having fun with the new situations. Fun really is the key word here. Except for the brief attempt in the Elizabethan segment to turn back the clock to an earlier incarnation of the program, everyone seems to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. And while it doesn't quite hit the (incredibly) high mark of earlier installments, by no means does it disgrace the series good name. In addition, for those who've never seen "Black Adder" before, it serves as a nice introduction to the remarkable flexibility of the series.
Rating:
Summary: Not the Place to Begin With Black Adder
Review: While a total stranger to the Black Adder corpus can appreciate it, a lot of this lovely little poison valentine's fun comes from being familiar with the setup and the characters so that one can ALMOST predict the next line or situation... and then being delighted when the writers and cast give it some twist you hadn't predicted. I must agree with another reviewer that the return to the court of Elizabeth I really doesn't work; it does indeed seem forced as if the actors no longer inhabit the characters, but rather are pretending to be their younger selves inhabiting the characters. (Does that make sense?) On the other hand, one of the funniest sequences in the production is in the Elizabethean time frame but without any of the series regulars save Blackadder himself, meeting up with Shakespeare, getting his autograph and then... Well, it's Very Funny. Even funnier if you thought Branagh's uncut "Hamlet" was a touch long. The Waterloo sequence is lovely, with a neat little "Wizard of Oz" reference. And, of course, the ending(s) -- particularly the end ending,a it were -- an absolute delight for the Black Adder fan, with, of course, an appropriate version of the theme song vocal for the end credits. The "extras" on the disc, though a bit sparse, are appreciated, including a short "making of" documentary piece, with the writer director and actors all expressing themselves with wonderful clarity, and also including a couple of bits that were (mostly for the better, i think, funny as they are) edited out of the episode. ALso under the "Special Features" menu are cast biographies, recited, in character, by "Baldrick". Unfortunately (and i don't know if it's a defect in the disc, itself, or in my APEX DVD player with the hacked firmware, or a combination), after the first few bios have played, the last few syllables or words of each bio were cut off as it skipped to the next.
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