Prince Caspian

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-- School Library Journal, 5/14/2008 7:26:00 AM

It’s no big deal that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian looks suspiciously like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings series and its fight scenes smack of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler.

What’s odd about this second installment of C. S. Lewis’s popular series is that the British actor Ben Barnes, as Prince Caspian, “talka lika theez,” because he (along with the other Telmarines, the race that has conquered Narnia) is a descendent of pirates who apparently hail from the Mediterranean.   

From the start, doom and gloom prevail as the Telmarines set out to exterminate (the film’s description, not Lewis’s) Narnia’s noble dwarfs, centaurs, and Talking Beasts. The villains steal screen time away from the child-friendly badger, Trufflehunter, and the wisecracking, “swordsmouse,” Reepicheep. Although many of Lewis’s characters make an appearance, the fun-loving Bacchus and his wild girls, the Maenads, are conspicuously missing.

The screenplay stays fairly close to Lewis’s original plot for the first hour. Fleeing from his uncle Miraz’s assassins and seeking help, Caspian blows a magic horn, which transports the four Pevensie children (Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy) from London under the blitz back to Narnia. Although it has only been a year or so since their first adventure in Narnia, 1,300 years have passed in Narnian time. Anna Popplewell, as the older sister Susan, is as glum as she was in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the series’ first episode, looking as if she has smelled something foul.

Because of a lengthy attack on Miraz’s stronghold, followed by an equally drawn-out battle scene with a cast of thousands and a pivotal sword fight—which combined occupy only paragraphs in the book—the film wobbles past the two-hour mark. No wonder the 1989 BBC adaptation combined Prince Caspian with the next volume in Lewis’s series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

However, there are enough special effects—rampaging trees, a sea giant—to catch the wandering eye. And with the stomp-stomp-stomp sound effects, there’s no chance you’ll drift off.

Most adults will find Prince Caspian tedious, but young viewers are likely to be mildly diverted, rather than actually swept up by the story.

Directed by Andrew Adamson
144 minutes
Rated PG

All photos: Murray Close