3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG, and far too gently, due to a very grim tone and considerable violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.16.08
Buy DVD: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
• Buy Blu-Ray: Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian [Blu-ray]
Given Radio Disney's involvement with this film's Tuesday evening preview in Sacramento, and the impressive Mouse House publicity machine at work as these words are typed, one can't help assuming that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is designed as a family-friendly follow-up to its lavishly produced and enthusiastically received 2005 predecessor.
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| The Pevensie children — from left, Edmund (Skandar Keynes), Peter (William Moseley), Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell) — follow their new friend, Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), into an underground crypt, where they're saddened to find the final resting place of Aslan, the wise and kindly lion who helped so much during their previous adventures in Narnia. |
The misleading PG rating also supports that belief.
But while this adventure saga delivers a smashing good time (literally!), parents need to exercise caution: Director/co-scripter Andrew Adamson's second run at C.S. Lewis is very grim stuff, with a mercilessly bleak atmosphere and a body count comparable to that found in Shakespeare's Hamlet or Macbeth. The battle scenes are impressively staged — one intimate, two monumental — but the presentation is comparable to the PG-13 hacking and slashing of all three Lord of the Rings entries.
Bad things happen to good characters in this sequel, and impressionable youngsters are apt to get rather upset when some of their favorite supporting characters don't make it to the final act.
Yes, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
had its share of dire doings, but most concerned the supernatural machinations of Tilda Swinton's White Witch. Although she makes a brief return appearance here, the (ahem) lion's share of battlefield mayhem is of the man-made, sword-wielding variety. Watching scores (hundreds?) of foot-soldiers on both sides get sliced and diced is a bit more unsettling than seeing folks turned into statues.
I also wonder whether contemporary filmmakers have any sense of the attention span of today's children. Prince Caspian runs an impressive 138 minutes — rather a lot of movie for such a short book! — and while Adamson maintains a lively pace that moves the story right along, that's still asking a lot of the restless youngsters at whom this picture seems aimed.
The slightly older Harry Potter crowd, on the other hand, should have a great time.
After an all-too brief prologue in Blitz-ravaged London, our four young protagonists — Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (the still irresistible Georgie Henley) — are summoned back to Narnia by the blast of a magical horn. But they arrive to find that centuries have passed during their single year in London: Everything they remember of Narnia, and all the friendly characters with whom they bonded, are nothing but distant memories.
Indeed, the very magic has been leached from the land: Trees no longer sing or gambol, and most forest animals have reverted to their more primal Earthlike counterparts.
Aslan, the wonderfully wise lion so beloved by young Lucy, hasn't been seen for a millennium.
