The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Even though the genre is fantasy, the books are grossly lacking in fantasy because of stupid propaganda. In this respect, Adamson remained faithful to the original. He filmed a routine family movie about how four underage brats, with the help of the incredibly egocentric furry Jesus, slaughter hundreds of innocent fathers. And despite the severely ridiculous final fifteen minutes (although the White Witch's mobile arms factory from number one remained unsurpassed) and even though the pace is slow, it is a better movie than last time. It's nice to look at; it's nice to listen to (unless Lucy and Aslan are talking); Dinklage, the mice, and the bad guys make it move along pretty nicely, but they can't make up for the wretchedness of the child "actors", especially the character of Lucy, despite all their efforts. A shorter running time, more tolerable kids, and a director with imagination might have made it a better movie. But that's not very likely in this case. So it gets three feeble-hearted stars. (07/05/2008)

Andrew Adamson deserves a big thank you for turning my least favorite part of the Chronicles into a film that helped me forget my first infamous encounter with the sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. To this day, I still don't consider the handling of Susan and her fate C.S. Lewis's biggest problem, but rather the fact that he "dared" to so crudely transplant the kings and queens of the Golden Age into the Dark Ages of Narnia's history. I am fascinated and admire the precision and realism of Telmar and accept all the changes, including the swarthy and older Caspian. In but a moment I am able to forget even the embarrassment that "Caspian" aroused at the BBC (and inspired them to merge it with "The Dawn Treader") and begin to see it entirely as a dense realistic drama. The story of the kings and queens who became children again is fully developed into an excellent clash of authorities. The many inevitable mistakes that both Peter and Caspian are responsible for perfectly underline and illuminate all the questions raised by the all-too-brief ending of the first film. The 15-year reign was indeed no mere dream, and even a year of living in wartime London could not suppress it in the minds of the Pevensies. The fact that on their return to Narnia, they encountered the utterly charming Reepicheep and the ubiquitous Jadis is just the icing on the cake of perfection. (02/03/2009)

This was an incredible comedown from the first installment. All the fairytale atmosphere that wonderfully highlighted the first movie is gone, and the things that previously immersed the audience into the story – the beautiful sets and an interesting plot – are replaced by tedious mundanity. Instead, we are treated to crude, naturalistic, and barbaric fighting without any sense of purpose, which the majority of the plot consists of this time around. If it was rated PG-15 – so be it, however, how is it supposed to work as a movie aimed at a young audience?! The wannabe smartass clever camera tricks (arrow, flying over the battlefields, etc.) look awkward and all the visual effects, fantastical creatures, and other miscreants, which are, in the vast majority of cases, the movie’s main attraction for the audience, are bland and, apart from the beautiful water giant, completely lost in the course of the battles. Were it not for the slight improvement in the performances of the three leads, Ben Barnes, and the excellent soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams, I would have only awarded it one star. This is definitely the biggest cinematic disappointment of the year. (07/04/2008)

I will probably have to read Narnia sometime, because otherwise I will think that it is just some modest imitation of fantasy written by other authors. The movies pretend to be epic, but in reality, they seem incredibly intimate, which wouldn't be so bad, except they don't want to be intimate, they just come out that way in the end. It's not a new "Lord of the Rings" and probably never will be, although I am still curious about how the next installments will turn out, which should still be filmed. (04/01/2014)