At the Movies
By Senitra Horbrook
Andrew Adamson has a pretty rough job as the director of The Chronicles of Narnia films. He has to please the adults who read (and most likely revered) C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia as children, entertain the folks who have never turned the spellbinding pages of any of the Narnia novels, and keep the film sanitized enough to receive a kid-friendly PG rating.
Oh, and that’s not even considering the huge task of keeping with the religious themes to please the Christian moviegoers, while at the same time not overloading the film with those themes to drive away all the other moviegoers.
I’d say he succeeded on all fronts in the series’ second feature film, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. The movie does stray from the book, but it’s still an entertaining adventure film, with heaps of action, small doses of faith and an even smaller amount of romance.
Hopefully, if you’re headed out to see Prince Caspian, you’ve seen (or read) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In that wildly successful film from 2005, we are introduced to the Pevensie children: Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley). The Pevensie children are whisked away to the magical world of Narnia (complete with talking animals), where they learn they are kings and queens and also defeat an evil witch. They receive spiritual guidance from the powerful Aslan, a lion.
Now that you’re all caught up, 1,300 years have passed in Narnia (but only a year in the real world) and the Pevensies are again called to Narnia, which is now in ruins.
An evil group of humans, known as the Telmarines, have driven all the Narnians into hiding. An even more evil man, King Mraz (Sergio Castellitto), wants his son to be king, so that means he needs the current heir to the throne, Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), out of the way.
Prince Caspian and the Pevensie children team up to take down Mraz and the other Telmarines, engaging in some epic battles (imagine sword-fighting in full armor) to make sure good conquers evil.
The battles are really well done, especially for a PG film. There’s no blood or gore to frighten the little ones, yet it’s still obvious what’s going on. The scenery is also quite beautiful, especially when the Pevensies first return to Narnia. This movie also has the most realistic centaurs (half-human, half-horse) I have ever seen. The CG creatures, most notably the bear and mouse, add some fun and a little humor.
The kids are a couple years older since the last movie, and they have grown nicely into their roles. Henley steals the scene as Lucy whenever she is on-screen, but, unfortunately, her time was not as extensive as some of the others’. Barnes, whom I have seen described as "dreamy" online, is a nice addition as Prince Caspian.
Aslan also has much less screen time in this installment, but is still around to dispense such invaluable advice as "Things never happen the same way twice."
Like Harry Potter, there also are seven books in this series, and all are planned to be films. That means two down, five more to go for Narnia. Let’s hope the films tp follow are worthy successors to the two that have charmed audiences thus far. ••
Movie Grade: B+