The first Merlin was quite entertaining and involved; but this apparent follow-up felt very weak, repetitive, predictable, frequently dull and more like a long, drawn-out episode of Hercules than a well-written drama. The scope of the story is much weaker and smaller -- a small group of supposed heroes, with Dark Secrets™ and so on, and takes place across a small period of time, where Merlin was supposed to span the entire life of the wizard. I guess that's what you get when the first is an adaptation of a dramatic, legendary tale, and the second is written as a cash-in on it. What is even worse is that they completely failed to properly follow up! The established facts, as portrayed in the first adaptation of the myth of Merlin, are ignored here for convenience -- some of the scenes and time-line are completely at odds with what went before. Combined with the poorly paced and written storyline, it just reeks of laziness. It shouldn't have been hard to spot these problems, so you have to assume they just decided to ignore them.If you're a fan of the first, don't watch this. And if you watch this and don't like it, don't let it put you off watching the first movie.

I had been excited for some time about this sequel, and was even more ecstatic when it came out in my local video store. However, after watching this movie the only thing I felt was relief that I hired the movie rather than buying it straight at the store.I really, really am thoroughly irritated by this sequel. OK, I was well aware of the fact that it wasn't so much of a sequel, as an 'alternate' retelling, and I was fine with it. But by the end of the movie I was ready to pull out my hair. This sequel is a total insult to the first movie.The only decent acting I saw in this movie came from Sam Neil, Miranda Richardson and maybe a few others. I really think Sam Neil and Miranda Richardson tried their best, but both look very out of place, and their talents and time were really wasted in this. As for the other actors... all I could do was laugh, and not in a good way. Most of the acting was really cheesy, and throughout the movie all I could think of was how funny their accents sounded.As for the plot, I can probably only rate it one iota above the acting. I could hardly see anything good about the story, and most of it was pretty bad, from the not so surprising plot 'twists' to the corny romance. There was only one thing I found half way decent about this movie and that was the battle towards the end, but even that was ruined by the actual ending.The lack of special effects don't really bother me, I've seen plenty of movies that are absolutely riveting without them, although the movie may have been slightly more tolerable if it had had more.erk... I'm going to stop now, because I seem to have annoyed myself again. So, overall, If you are someone loved the first movie, like me, spare yourself and don't watch this. I would not recommend this to anyone.

This three hour film is presented in two distinct parts - and I mean very distinct.The first part is actually rather charming in a dumb TV fantasy sort of way; Sam Niell is very winning as Merlin, and the story has some neat twists and turns, some predictable, but one or two unexpected; certainly we are left hanging over what might possibly have destroyed Camelot and erased its connection with the Holy Grail.But the second part - my God!, this is bad! Slow, completely predictable, a mind-numbingly ridiculous happy-ending, wretchedly hammy acting, a script that no longer remembers it's set in the Middle Ages, fight-scenes that are meaningless even when not confusingly disjointed - no one could imagine a worse second-half of any movie or TV series.So how the heck did it get imagined? My guess is, they started with half a script, got paid up front for the second half and decided, 'screw it, we got the money, let's take a vacation'. Either that or they just went suddenly psycho half-way through production.Don't share that fate (or mine, who wastefully kept watching, expecting - hoping - that something interesting might happen). Avoid this tripe at all costs.

Very confusing and absolutely pointless movie. Don't spend your time on this crap. I don't understand why good actors like Sam Neill and Miranda Richardson agreed to take part in this stuff. After more than 1 hour we still weren't able to figure what it was about. Most often used sentence was "Camelot is dead". (I always thought Camelot was a castle.... :-S ) It felt like reading book from the middle. Camera was horrible, quite often you could see someone's face all over the TV screen. I really dislike this way of filming. I was disappointed mainly because someone tried to make it looking like continuation of original great movie named Merlin, where Sam Neill and Miranda Richardson also played. But visibly it wasn't the same director as in the first movie. It's awful movie, I gave it 1 point. Yuck :(