Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8234 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-06-08
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 182 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
What kind of guy was the wizard Merlin, anyway? He lives a long time, raises a boy to be a king, props up a Utopian empire with his magic and wisdom, and then watches as it all crumbles under such banal forces as vengeance and betrayal. This four-hour miniseries re-tells the story of Camelot and King Arthur from the perspective of the magic man who sacrifices a great deal to guide mortals toward a better destiny. Sam Neill plays Merlin as an accessible, flesh-and-blood fellow of real passion, powerless to undo the spell of a rival (Rutger Hauer) who has virtually imprisoned Merlin's great love, Nimue (Isabella Rossellini), but gifted enough to counter the treachery of Morgan Le Fey (Helena Bonham Carter) and the wicked Queen Mab (Miranda Richardson). The battle sequences and special effects are striking and original, and it is great fun to see such art-house movie actors as Richardson, Carter, Neill, etc., in fantasy entertainment the whole family can enjoy. (An unrecognizable Martin Short must be singled out, however, for a wonderful, largely dramatic performance as Mab's sidekick, Frik.) Directed by Steve Barron (The Adventures of Pinocchio), Merlin is a nice bit of glossy revisionism of a beloved legend. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Happy Endings Matter!
I own several movies that tell the same tale in different ways, the tale of Merlin and King Arthur and Sir Lancelot. Of these the ones that have really stood out are "The Mists Of Avalon" , "Excalibur" and "Merlin". Of these 3 I must say that Merlin is my favorite. This is because the first 2 while wonderfully told and acted out, the endings were far from happy and feel good and more remeniscent of classic French movies with their tragic endings with only small glimmers of brightness. Merlin,however, is a fairy tale movie with a fairy tale ending..a happy one.. There is also quite a lot of humor and wit blended in this movie as well. If you enjoy movies that take place during the Arthurian time period then this is one you will want to add to your collection!

Fantasy film-making at its worst.
To say that great liberties were taken with `Merlin' is an understatement. This film is soooo awful that it takes Arthurian mythologies and proceeds to feed them to the paper shredder. With the exception of an excellent soundtrack, nothing can save this made-for-tv chugger from the shadows of its vastly superior predecessor `Excalibur'. Pairing Sam Neill, Helena Bonham-Carter, and Isabella Rosellini to a poor a script as this is the biggest waste of cinematic talent resources I have witnessed in years.
As if things couldn't get any worse, they had to add in annoying Martin Short's fictitous character. One can only take so much of the tastless, racist jokes he throws at them before hitting the eject button on the DVD player. I really wanted to enjoy this film badly, but that was not to be as my 12-year old daughter (who has read virtually all of the classical mythology sources for Merlin) kept pointing out the inaccuracies to me...such as how Nimue was supposed to be Merlin's mortal enemy instead of his
love interest. Merlin actually fared far worse than Arthur did, nothing like the `and they lived happily ever after' ending in the movie. Defenders of `Merlin' have also unfairly attacked `Excalibur' for using armour (which wasn't invented for another 700 years or so), while in `Merlin' they didn't as if this were a good enough reason for putting `Merlin' on top of `Excalibur'. If only they paid close attention to the TOURNAMENT scene in `MERLIN', they would have noticed the knights JOUSTING in ARMOURED
SUITS! In a nutshell, take the poor acting, script, dumbed-down dialogue, annoying Martin Short and that silly talking horse and you end up with `Excalibur' meets `Dumb and Dumber' meets `Disney' meets `Mr. Ed'. It was such a waste of my time, and probably more so for my daughter. Awarding 1 star for `Merlin' might seem very generous, but only because Amazon.com's grading system won't go any lower than that.

Oh, the humanity!
With over-used ideas such as the legends of King Arthur, filmmakers often have their work cut out for them unless they are willing to go the extra mile to be creative. The producers of Merlin are no exception, as they have failed miserably in that aspect. The performances are laughable to say the least. Sam Neill's wiseguy persona seemed out of place for the typically cold and reclusive Merlin. And just when things couldn't get any worse than Helena Bonham Carter's speaking with an annoying lisp, enter Martin Short. As Frik, he delivers line after line of irritating one-line inanities. The producers probably thought it was funny to employ racist jokes, but I sure didn't. What does dressing up in traditional Chinese garb, slanting your eyes and blurting out "Farro mee! Farro mee!" ("Follow me, follow me") in a mock Chinese accent have to do with sword and sorcery in medieval Britain? Absolutely nothing. With a script so trite and meaningless, it was perplexing that they didn't even bother
to go all out and have the Rockettes perform with Luke Skywalker in front of Macy's Camelot. Hallmark has done here to the legend of Merlin what they also did to the Bible in the horrible 1999 NBC mini-series "Noah's Ark". They turned it into a laughable Las Vegas nightclub act. Unlike its brilliant cinematic counterpart "Excalibur", Merlin plays like an awful made-for-TV movie because it happens to be just that- an awful made-for-TV movie.