‘Merlin: The Return’ is a missed opportunity, with catastrophic results. Almost every aspect of this picture feels like it’s been fumbled, watered down or gotten lost in translation at one point or another across the runtime.

Indeed; the title itself would suggest it was a sequel, presumably if ‘Merlin’ is returning, we must have had an adventure with him previously? NO! No we havent ladies and gents. Instead, ‘Merlin: The Return’ is a strange hodge podge of time travel, witch craft and transdimensional portals embedded in stone henge that quite honestly was a chore to try and keep up with.

The plot is thus, its the year of our lord 1999. and theres trouble brewing. Y’see? 1500 years prior, a great battle was held between a powerful sorcerer called Mordrid and his army, and King Arthur and his armies assisted by Merlin. the battle reached a fevered pitch as Merlin fought against Mordrids spells, Mordrid managed to claim the sword Excaliber, giving him the edge in battle.

He reveals that Arthurs most trusted Knight ‘Lancelot’ has been banging King Arthurs Missus. and in the confusion, Merlin uses his powers to seal both himself and the ENTIRE battle in…what I can only describe as a ‘time lock’…They were essentially frozen in time in some kind of pocket reality thats tied to Stone henge.

Back in the year 1999, a scientist by the name of Maxwell is working on some studies around the manipulaiton of the earths magnetic poles, and in doing so, she creates a ‘schizm’ in the timelock reactivating everyone who was put in there, but keeping them trapped in their pocket dimension. Merlin manages to escape, as does King Arthur and some of his men, who all hide out in the woods and attack cars thinking they’re beasts.

At the same time we’re introduced to Kate, Ritchie and their respective families. Kates mum is a medium and Maxwell (who has discovered the pocket dimension) is trying to contact the beings inside it. eventually using Kates Mum as a conjuit to speak to Mordrid. Who gives her the instruction required to start working on busting open the time lock.

Ritchie meanwhile is new to the country, his dads just died and he’s feeling all angsty and upset at the world (but like…in a way that magically vanishes unless the plot needs it) he arrives in the village and they almost kill Merlin, who teleports into the real world from the time lock and is deeply confused.

Anway; to cut a long story short, the kids find out Mordrid is up to no good when they catch Kates mum possessed by him, Merlin finds Arthur and his army and the pair begin to plan on how to seal Mordrid away for good, the kids follow Maxwell back to her lab (as does Merlin) and adventures are on for people who consider themselves easily exciteable.

I honestly dont even know where to begin with this thing. Probably with the thought that marinated in my brain from about 5 minutes in right the way up to the end credits…YOU HAVE RIK MAYALL IN YOUR MOVIE AS A WIZARD…AND YOU SOMEHOW MADE IT BORING!

I wish it wasnt the case, but this films somehow managed the near impossible feat of taking MULTIPLE really cool and fun little ideas and just…utterly draining them of any and all charisma and warmth. The plot sounds awesome on paper! Arthur, Merlin, a load of knights and an evil wizard all get pulled out of the 1500’s and dumped in 1999 to finish off an epic battle of magic and sword play, while also getitng accustomed to a world that basically must be alien for them.

I was envisioning Mayall in robes prancing around a battle field zapping people into rabbits, cracking *slightly* naughty jokes and being whimsically baffled by modern technology, while also giving off a warmth to the kids that would really bring in a ‘family movie’ dynamic.

I was basically thinking of ‘Hocus Pocus’ meets ‘Harry Potter’ crossed with ‘Drop dead fred’ but it just…isnt. Its an incredibly straight laced 3 act piece that largely consists of MULTIPLE phoned in performances. almost NOONE on set seemingly cares about this film. i’d say the tone was all over the place, but that would imply it had a main tone to begin with. It’s vanilla ice cream, it doesnt commit to being overly serious, it doesnt commit to being funny or silly…

The plot itself opens awkwardly, establishing the pocket dimension and the schizm FIRST, then introducing the characters who caused it SECOND…THEN introducing the kids…who dont even become relevent for 15 minutes past that point…and finally introducing Merlin and Arthur properly. It meant that all our pieces were on the board by the 30 minute mark. But they’d been thrown on so haphazardly that I had to stop the film for 10 minutes and go back over my notes to understand exactly WHAT i’d just sat through.

Its sluggish all the way through, they cant seem to nail the pacing of any of the action scenes, meaning everything just feels like an elongated struggle to hit the next cue. the dialogue is utterly abysmal. The characters have ZERO definition or complexity. what you see on screen is what you get with these characters, as far as this films concerned they started existing when you hit play on the movie, and when the credits rolled they may as well have died.

The directions not great either, it really kind of smacks of ‘made for TV movie’ fodder, a lot of my rating for this film is going on the technical ability of this movie because, fundamentally…it’s not a bad looking film. But its incredibly bland and has nothing really going for it to make it stand out against any other transatlantic co-production of that time. It really visually reminded me of shows like ‘Hercules: the legendary journey’s’ or the 1996 ‘Doctor who TV movie’…which…if THATS what your films reminding me of?…thats not exactly a gold star of quality indicator.

The cine struggles for most of the runtime, composition is kind of flat and lifeless, the CGI has NOT aged well and looks like a mixture of digital smears and clipart .GIF’s. they do utilise some interesting lighting choices in places and the scenes do have a structure to them, but the edit is sloppy, it loses the narrative thread INCREDIBLY easily (and repeatedly) and as a warning, if your prone to seizures…dont watch this thing because the final 15 minutes of this film is basically like being flashbombed through your TV non stop. Im prone to migraines and didnt need to see that…soooo…im writing this while I can still see.

The performances are dire. I dont talk about child actor performances as a rule…thats genuinely a mercy for this film…Rik Mayall is phoning it in for 99% of the films runtime, honestly his best performance is in this films ‘making of’ where he has to pretend to be enthused about the movie…and he cant even muster that without his trademark sarcasm. the rest of the cast all feel like am-dram performances, everyones stiff as a board and barely uses their set space, there seems to be some confusion around where the frame begins and ends, the dialogue deliveries are LITERALLY some of the worst performances i’ve ever seen put on film. i’ve seen bad AI bots deliver dialogue more convincingly.

The audio for these performances constatly switches between on set and ADR…its a really poor show with no real standout winner…

The soundtrack? I quite liked, it’s orchestral, it suited the tone of the film fine enough, but its probably one of the most misused OST’s i’ve ever heard. they have a really odd gentle ambient track that runs for the entire duration of the final battle of this film (the final battle being three wizards firing spells at each other and being smashed around the place while an army cause mischief in the background) It really needed a more action oriented score behind it to emphisize the action we see on screen, it needed tighter shot composition, more focus on facial features and reactions…instead we get 10 minutes of wide shots backed by what sounds like late 70s Brian Eno on an off day…

I didnt hate ‘Merlin: The Return’ If it were on in the background, I wouldnt mind…but it is a poor POOR film in almost every other regard. Mayall is wasted here, the rest of the cast cant be arsed, the scripts dull, the direction and cine are borderline and the soundtracks misused.

When you could have had King arthur trying a motorbike as an alternative to a horse, Merlin astounded by television (and with it being Mayall, the adult channels no doubt) and some goofy kids who could have had a heartwarming and silly experience with the real life court of king arthur…to boil it down to an hour and 27 minutes of heavy discussion about magnetic polarity, opening and closing portals and the status of a sword?, all played fairly straight cut?…its a VERY dry experience…and one I am unlikely to actively pursue again…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/merlin-the-return/