“The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”
May 17th, 2008 by KananiMy 7-year-old brother, Landon, begged me to take him to watch “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”. Ever since the previews were shown on the Disney Channel weeks ago, he has been counting down the days until its opening. He enjoyed “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and had high expectations for this movie. So, in “good sister” style, I decided to placate his desire to be mesmerized once again with the characters in C.S. Lewis’ books.
The movie begins as a baby boy is born, son of King Miraz. Prince Caspian needs to die in order for the newborn to take over the throne. In trying to escape, Prince Caspian gets hold of the “horn” and blows it to summon the Pevensie siblings. They return to Narnia to help Prince Caspian restore freedom and peace to the land, along with Aslan and others. The simplicity of the plot was complicated by the factual details. Maybe if I had read the novel before seeing this movie, I would have been more well-informed about intricacies of the storyline.
The duration of the film was 2 hours and 24 minutes, but seemed much longer, which was validated by Landon whispering to me every five minutes: “I told you it was three hours long”. The first hour unveiled the plot, consisted of a re-cap of important information from the first movie, and provided time for the Narnians to assemble. The second hour officially starts the core of the action.
The comic relief was incredible in this film. Just as the movie was going into intense dramatization mode, the hilarious mouse would appear and throw out a funny line or two. Ah, yes, the mouse… I think the mouse was the funniest part of the movie (I’m not sure if this was an original character from the book or if this creature was formulated for comical purposes?). However, the mouse somehow was an eyesore and did not blend into the “Narnian” feel of the movie. The mouse came right out of “Stuart Little” for sure!
The 411 Fo’ Reel: The special effects are worth seeing, as well as the beautiful settings in New Zealand. The first movie was better, and if you can tolerate the length of this movie, then go for it! The kids might learn some life lessons, for instance: “A common enemy unites even the oldest of foes.”
Here are a couple of questions I posed to myself when I left the theater, which made me wonder if the film accurately portrayed the book, or if the filmmakers went off on their own tangent to include every possible version of a derived fantasy world and threw it all into the melting pot:
1) How old were the Pevensie siblings when they went back to Narnia and why did they still look so young? Supposedly the siblings were thousands of years old when they returned to Narnia…
2) Why was there such an inconsistency in the way the Narnians looked? You have some with a half-horse, half-human body, others who were dwarfs… the list goes on…
May 18th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Nice review, thanks. I did see “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and thought it was an ok family-fantasy movie. I couldn’t get into the characters and probably won’t see “Prince Caspian” after your review. I dunno, the whole genre requires so much special effects that you get desensitized and makes me somewhat detached emotionally. Even though the “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” movies were entertaining, I find it hard to connect with special effects characters…although it brought a tear in my eye watching some of the scenes between ET and the boy.
May 18th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Movie going lately for us, myself and my wife, have been very sparse because it was one lousy movie after another that turned us away. But I’ll keep looking at this blog for a winner. Of late my wife has given up on which movies I say as can’t miss and they turned out to be so terrible. Frequently, now and in the past, she has kicked back in her chair, popcorn and soda in hand and after 5 minutes of watching the movie she puts her sun glasses on and has fallen to sleep because the movies, like Lakehouse, Casino and 300 (and many more) were so boring and not to her liking.And admittingly, for myself watching her with one eye on each, movie and her sleeping, is indeed priceless. And worth the price of a ticket…of course I’m speaking for myself. So I’ll keep reading this blog and look forward to reading a great movie writeup. Either way,good movie or bad,. we do get our laughs.
May 19th, 2008 at 6:45 am
ralvic: seen a number of the 08 oscar nominated films and the ones I really liked were “Juno,” “La Vie En Rose,” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” Also good were “Michael Clayton” and “Bourne Ultimatum.” Love Johnny Depp but didn’t like “Sweeny Todd.” So I think there were a number of films worth watching…maybe your wife likes to watch a certain genre or just like to nap during movies.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:55 am
To answer some of your questions: The Pevensie children were a year older in this film than the first. When they left Narnia the first time no time had really passed in England. It was a year later in England time that they were transported back to Narnia but 1300 years later in Narnia time. The Narnians were represented accurately from the book. As with most fantasies, there are varying creatures. As for Reepicheep (the mouse) he plays an important role in the next book. Anyway, I thought the movie was good not great.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:19 pm
I really wanted to see this and actually had a free sneak preview pass from work but ended up having a family get-together and missing the movie. Although I don’t necessary like fantasies, I did like the first movie and I vaguely remember reading the series when I was a kid. But, this one sounds like I can wait to watch it on dvd.
June 4th, 2008 at 7:48 am
the makers of Prince Caspian kept to the original story in a lot of ways, but then strayed in others… i had heard they were going to make it into a silly pure-action flick, but thankfully this was not the case
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