British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC),
Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Robbie Coltrane, Miriam Margolyes, Jim Broadbent, Denis Lill, Pauline Melville

Ebenezer Backadder, aka. Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) is a Victorian shopkeeper, visited by several ghosts on Christmas Eve who showed him his past ancestors as well as his future heirs, and in the process turned the gentle Mr. Blackadder into a miserable old miser after teaching him the evils of being kind and generous. But he soon learns that being mean has it’s own problems.
Many of us remember Rowan Atkinson’s “Mr. Bean” series of TV shows and movies, but Blackadder or Black Adder is his “other” series. This TV special is a twist on the Dickens “A Christmas Carol” with the ghosts changing a kind and gentle shopkeeper into a mean old miser. This is given the Atkinson treatment. Although I don’t think this is anywhere near as funny as Mr. Bean was, it’s hard to develop another character as special as Mr. Bean. Blackadder is perhaps an effort to do too much, spanning too much history, and not nearly as funny as hilarious as the other series. However, this is a cute twist on the story. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reverse Christmas Carol, and perhaps it has its place in history for that simple fact alone. It’s definitely vintage Rowan Atkinson, and it is, after all, a TV movie, not a feature release. Fans of Mr. Bean may find this pretty funny, as Blackadder fans certainly will. For me, I expected it to be a lot funnier, and I was fairly disappointed in this version of the Scrooge story. I always said I never saw “A Christmas Carol” that I didn’t like, but perhaps this is the first!
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
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British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Revolution Films
Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Claire Keelan, Margo Stilley, Rebecca Johnson, Dolya Gavanski, Kerry Shale, Paul Popplewell

The Trip is a mockumentary featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon cleverly named Steve and Rob, who set out on a food trip across England to visit the best restaurants in the country. But these two guys try to entertain themselves on the road by talking about their career highlights and doing impressions of famous actors and developing scenes.
I didn’t get into this movie in the least. I am aware that many people find it hysterical, but there is not point to this in the least. There is no opening and no ending. It just begins with Rob complaining the Steve does not know the first thing about wine tasting. We get to watch the two arguing with each other about the finer points of properly tasting wine. They go through what seems like hours of discussion over such hysterical (NOT) subjects as announcing a show by Trevor Eve on BBC 1, attempting hundreds of ways to make the announcement in different inflections and with different emphasis. Later we get to see 45 minutes of the King announcing to his men that they will be in battle tomorrow morning, and many will die, but after a continental breakfast at 7:30. The battle will be 10ish. There’s very little material, and it’s very much repeated to death. We see what seems like hours of these two driving through the countryside repeating the same things over and over and over again. I don’t understand people who get this kind of humor. Perhaps if you are really familiar with English pop culture, and/or fans of Steve and Rob. I am neither, and this really was hard to sit through. It’s the first film in a long time that I really, really wanted to turn off after 20 minutes, but I sat through the whole thing just to see if it got any better. This was worse to me than watching paint dry, and I urge you to avoid this at all costs.
A horrible film!
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
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