The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - The Review

(PG)

NATALIE

ANDY

One year has taken place since the last movie. Well at least for the siblings who fought for Narnia in the last movie. An emergency signal is used in Narnia, that summons the brothers and sisters back to Narnia. When they arrive, they are shocked to find that 1,300 years have passed, and Narnia isn't the nice place it was when they left it. Prince Caspian, the rightful king of all the land, has fled because of an assasination attempt. Narnia has been conquered by the Telmarines, and is now under the control of the evil King Miraz, who rules the land without mercy. Prince Caspian meets up with our heroes from the last movie and you have good VS. evil in a battle for all the lands.

I will start out by saying I thought the first movie (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe) was fantastic. Both of these stories were originally written by C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis writes with so much symbolance, that there are religion classes at BYU on how his writings can be related to the LDS religion (http://creativeworks.byu.edu/Catalog/ViewItem.aspx?item=KB438). In the first movie the references to Christianity were so obvious, I remember my Bishop talking about the movie briefly in sacrament meeting.

Maybe it was my high expectations from the last movie, maybe it was my infamiliarity with this storyline, or maybe I was just not perceptive enough to recognize the christian references in the movie that I was trying to watch for. But I thought this movie was just OK. Natalie had read the book after seeing the last movie, and as you can see, she enjoyed it just a bit more than I did.

If you are going to see a continuation to the first movie, you will be disappointed. About the only similarities are, some snipets of recognizable soundtrack, and 4 characters from the first movie (5 if you count Azlan's 10 minute cameo). Otherwise you have a brand new movie with these few things injected into it

This movie had awesome special effects. The castle used in this movie was magnificent. I am a sci-fi junky, and read lots of books related to the land of Kings, Queens, Knights, Champions and Scorcerers, and I thought this castle would fit into any of those magnificent stories. With talking animals, various monsters, and an epic battle at the end, no expense was spared on the special effects (except one). I know this is morbid to say (and I know why they did it), but considering how violent the fighting was, there was no blood (except a bloody lip). They used all their fake blood budget for computer effects. Now I am not blood thirsty, it was just interesting to me, and for all the effort they put into making an animal look like its really talking, it sure made the fights end fake. Maybe it wouldn't have been as obvious if Peter wasn't so fond of beheading people to end the fight. This movie stretched from imaginary to epic in such a small time it felt out of place. They had the makings of such an intense battle, and then cut to scenes with soldiers, who were about to die, commenting about how they were just killed by a mouse.

Natalie and I debated on taking the kids to this movie because they loved the last one. After the movie, we were both happy we didn't take them. This movie was much darker than the first, and was more dependant on the verbatim of the movie to figure out what was going on. Brian would have loved the movie just because he is a boy, and any fighting is cool. Kallie would have been bored and maybe even scared a bit by the movie. And with a running time of 2 hours and 34 minutes, thats a lot of time to keep a 4 year old girl sitting in a dark room (popcorn and treats only last so long, till the bathroom visits are requested to kill the boredom).

I am not sad I saw this movie. No matter what the reviews, I would have seen this movie no matter what, based on how good the first movie was. The actors did a great job, and it was fun to see the younger siblings grown up a bit, and take stronger roles in the movie. Lets just say it didn't meet my expectations. I am sure I will see it again, and who knows, maybe I will like it better the second time around. This movie just didn't leave me with the feelings of excitment, or happiness, that the last couple movies we saw in the theaters did.

(Next week, Indiana Jones, we already bought our tickets for it!!)