The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Review by Jason Gaston
As someone who read the Narnia books as a child, reflected in my previous review of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, I hold these stories near and dear to my heart not for the Christian allegory which I really hold with very little regard, but strictly for the fact that it was the first book series that I ever read from cover to cover from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to The Last Battle. For a kid with ADD being mired in the American school system which was just beginning to teach to tests, that was an accomplishment but there was one thing that almost stopped me and that was book #2, Prince Caspian, the weakest book in the series.
Year later, the
weakest book in the Narnia series has become the weakest movie in the
Narnia series, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
The story just isn't interesting enough to build a movie around and,
while I was watching Prince Caspian in a state of stone-cold boredom,
I realized why - there's hardly any magic in it! Sure, it's got
the talking badger, vermin, and a couple of midgets, but they are all
relegated to minor supporting roles. The sense of wonder and
magic that uplifted the first movie simply is not there.
What's worse is that these minor magical characters spend most of their time following a very boring leading man in the form of Ben Barnes as Caspian. As Caspian, Barnes brings no warmth to the character and when I say that, I mean that the character seems only three steps above a reptile. There's no humanity in Caspian and the monotone delivery of every single line transforms the character into an anchor that drags the entire film into the murky waters of mediocrity.
Even Aslan, one of the more fascinating characters from the first movie, couldn't be bothered to show up for Prince Caspian. Instead, he teases the audience in a dream sequence and then shows up for the last ten minutes. Imagine a Batman movie that follows Alfred around for two hours only to have Batman swoop in moments before the credits roll.
There was really no excuse for this movie being this bland. While The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe might have been The Lord of the Rings Lite, Prince Caspian isn't of a high enough station for that comparison. This is more like Willow Lite.
Prince Caspian is, I suppose, a passable but dull fantasy movie and, much in the same vein as Titanic, if you can make it 3/4 of the way through the movie, you're rewarded with scenes of a lot of people dying horribly. It's not a perfect system and you do have to trudge through a lot of malarkey and filler, but there is a reward at the end -- sort of like finding a toy in a box of grape nuts.