Film Review- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

LIBERTAS REVIEW: The Chronicle of Narnia: Prince Caspian **BUMPED**

All 140 minutes of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian are vastly superior to its predecessor. The crucial difference is that unlike The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Caspian is not a C.S. Lewis picture, it’s a director’s picture — it‘s an Andrew Adamson picture. Wardrobe was overly cautious and entirely too tentative in bringing to life a beloved children’s book. Good intentions, while appreciated, don’t always make for great storytelling and Wardrobe had a precious, sterile quality which only served as a kind of serviceable entertainment; a film that didn’t betray the source material but whose fear of doing so kept us at arm’s length. With Prince Caspian, Adamson steps out with confidence and creates an epic and magnificent adventure that engages and exhilarates from opening scene to closing credits.


Only a year has passed for the four Pevensie siblings, who after growing to adulthood as kings and queens in Narnia are now having trouble adjusting as everyday children in the real world of WWII-era London. However, in Narnia, a full 1300 years have passed and the four siblings and their kingdom of wondrous talking animals have melted away into history — into the kind of legend found on cave drawings. Narnia’s now ruled by General Miaz, the power-hungry uncle of Prince Caspian — the rightful heir to the throne.
The story opens on the birth of Miaz’s son — a son who would be king were it not for Caspian. After narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, Caspian finds himself exiled and protected by the wondrous creatures he thought only existed in the folk tales taught to him by his mentor.

Relentlessly hunted by Miaz’s soldiers, Caspian uses Susan’s magic horn, drawing Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy from a London subway station back to their beloved Narnia. It takes a while for the four children to adjust to a Narnia they no longer recognize, but events soon force them into another confrontation with evil that will require from them even more than when they confronted the White Witch.

Caspian avoids the episodic plotting of its predecessor by immediately setting up a momentum towards a coming battle which looms within the subtext of every scene. Plenty of time is taken to introduce new characters and re-introduce old ones, but make no mistake, Caspian is a war film and everything is about preparing for that final confrontation.

While the special effects are much improved over those in Wardrobe, which were often cheesy, the characters are never lost in the grand spectacle. The plot is refreshingly simple, but the characters and their relationships are not, and even during the grandest of battle scenes, which are exceptionally well-choreographed and shot, the humanity of the people fighting the battle remain the focus.

Each of the four leads is given an opportunity to shine. These are the highlights of the film because of an exceptional script which keeps the moments essential to the story, faithful to the themes being explored, and important to the development of each character. It also helps that since the first film the four children have grown remarkably both as actors and in a natural ability to command the screen. As Prince Caspian, Ben Barnes is the most pleasant of surprises. All my concerns that he was just another hollow piece of Hollywood tween-bait faded quickly. He brings more to the table than a pretty face.

Other notable performances include The Mighty Peter Dinklage as the dwarf Trumpkin, who suffers the patronizing indignity of his size with a series of memorable laugh-out-loud asides. His best moment, however, comes at the end when the cynic is finally made to understand what he was really fighting for. If you loved Shrek’s Puss n’Boots, get ready for Eddie Izzard’s hilarious and warm interpretation of the gallant mouse Reepicheep who should be charged with felony scene stealing.

A more fitting title for this wonderful sequel might have been, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lie Of Kumbaya. Caspian’s themes of honor, faith, nobility, and self-sacrifice all come to a single point: confronting and destroying an evil that will not be appeased or negotiated with. This is often a dark adventure, and one that doesn’t ask us to turn the other cheek when it comes to confronting evil — even through war.

Like a great 1940s swashbuckler, Caspian never crosses the line from action into violence, and yet there’s still plenty of suspense and a sense of the real stakes involved in life and death. In the breathtaking climax, which rivals those in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the thrills are a result of your affection for the characters not from anything visceral.

The Christian theme is not only stronger in Caspian than in Wardrobe, but integrated more naturally into the story — slowly building with events until it perfectly climaxes at the end for maximum emotional effect. This is not some new-age Christian allegory where if you fall to your knees in some sun-dappled field and raise your hands to Jesus all your problems will go away. As in life, God is not a deus ex machina. There’s a bigger picture at work — a master plan — and it’s up to us to find our place within that plan, not the other way around. What Would Aslan Do? No. What Would Aslan Want Us To Do.

Everything you could possibly ask for in an adventure film Caspian offers and then some. Photographed with style to spare and set to a rousing score worthy of an Errol Flynn classic, Caspian delivers any number of wonderful, well-defined characters you care about, strong and worthy themes, warmth, humor, and a driven plot determined first and foremost to entertain. With Iron Man I was sure the best film of the summer was already behind us. I do love it when I’m wrong.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 7:45 am and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.