| Overall Grade: |
C- |
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| Story: |
C- |
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| Acting: |
B |
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| Direction: |
D+ |
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| Visuals: |
B+ |
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Narnia fans beware! Prince Caspian plummets.
by Nate (movies profile)
Jul 12, 2008
102
of
125 people found this review helpful
Walden Media’s most recent edition to the Narnia movie franchise sadly fails to impress. Although the movie boasts a strong cast of actors, Prince Caspian falls apart on its weak script and superficial directing by Andrew Adamson. The trouble here seems to be that both the script writer and director (and possibly Walden Media and Disney?) could not embrace the message and the themes of Lewis’ book. As a result, the movie edits out or severely compromises much of the real character development and interesting story lines in the original story and replaces them with Hollywood’s usual bag of tricks: gratuitous amounts of violence, overtly sentimental moments that fail to resonate, and romance that in this case seems disturbingly like mental statutory rape.
One of the major problems of the film is the handling of the title character, Prince Caspian. Several critics have noted the somewhat bland performance by Ben Barnes but in all fairness I think he made the role as interesting and convincing as he could with the material he had to work with. The script provided no character arc for Caspian, and frankly this take on Caspian is very different from Lewis’ original version which is far more interesting. For starters, Lewis wrote the character to be a young teenager, probably around thirteen years old and not the adult twenty something we see in the film. In the book, Caspian starts out thinking and believing like a typical Telmarine but changes through the influences of his tutor over time. This development is not portrayed in the film. The book also shows that Caspian loves his uncle and explores his relationship with Miraz before the betrayal which ultimately makes Caspian and Miraz much more three dimensional than in the film. Over the course of the book, Caspian moves from a place of ignorance and childhood innocence to the world of adults and all of its complications. There is a real shift of thinking in Caspian, a gaining of maturity, and a loss of innocence without a loss integrity or Caspian’s quality of goodness all of which is missing from the film. The change in age also made Peter’s leadership and sword fight with Miraz somewhat odd as you would expect the older Caspian to be doing what Peter was doing.
The second major error in the film is the character take on Peter. Although I had no problem with the addition of anger problems within Peter‘s character, I did have a problem seeing him lead a disastrous pre-emptive attack on the Telmarine castle. In the book, the Pevansies arrive in the middle of a war started by the Telmarines. In the movie, the Telmarines haven’t even attacked the Narnians yet when Peter leads an assault on the castle. I found myself feeling sorry for the Telmarines being invaded by the violent evil Narnians rather than the other way around. Big mistake on the part of script writer there. I’m all about the flawed hero but only up to a point. The movie also fails to make clear Peter’s major flaw, his lack of faith in Aslan. That being said, William Moseley's acting was spot on and he definitely stole several scenes from Ben Barnes.
The third major problem in the film is the handling of Susan’s character. First of all, Susan gets to do all these amazing bow shots which frankly becomes unbelievable and then funny, and then just boring after awhile. Second, the film doesn’t bring out the bitchy whiny I don’t want to break a nail or get blisters on my smooth hands Susan that Lewis portrays in the book. I personally would have been a lot more interested in her than the brave courageous Susan in the movie. Lastly, the schmuck in Hollywood who decided a love interest between Susan and Prince Caspian was a good idea should have gotten shot. If I have to explain why then there is a problem.
The fourth major flaw is the handling of the Telmarine’s as a whole which seems to resemble Castilian culture in a potentially offensive way. I personally think the movie didn’t develop a three dimensional picture of the Telmarines which I felt was necessary in the effort to provide a contrast to the Narnia way of life. This contrast would have sharpened the losses suffered in Narnia as well as bringing out some of the good and bad qualities of the Telmarines.
The fifth major problem of the movie was Miraz. Through no fault of the actor (again the bad script is to blame) he just wasn’t evil enough.
The sixth major problem was the direction of the action scenes. First, there were way too many of them and they simply became boring after awhile. I found myself waiting for the movie to be over a little more than half way through. The second problem is the action scenes felt like re-enactments from the Lord of the Rings at times (aka magical river drowns enemy) or Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (aka follow the arrow shot), etc. Finally, the fight scenes often times felt artificial, particularly when characters brandished crossbows like they would a machine gun.
The last major problem of the film is the handling of Aslan who frankly said a lot more and did a lot more in the book. It would take too long to go through and explain it all but lets just say the scenes with Aslan are the meaty parts of the story that make it work and if you edit the Lion you wreck the film. These scenes with Aslan also go more thoroughly into the losses suffered in Narnia (which were hardly touched on in the film) and the restoration brought at the end. Aslan is what makes us love Narnia and care about Narnians. The lack of these scenes made it hard to sympathize with the good guys in the film or be excited about the victory in the end.
That all being said, the movie has some redeeming qualities. First, Peter Dinklage is wonderfully amusing and dramatically moving as Trumpkin and Eddie Izzard is hysterical as Reepicheep. The best scene in the film, dramatically though, is Tilda Swinton’s captivating reprisal of the White Witch during one scene.
Georgia Henley gave a shining performance as Lucy but I couldn’t help feeling that her scenes were too brief and that if they had been expanded, particularly the one’s with Aslan, the movie might have been saved.
In conclusion, teach Hollywood a lesson (the only way is by hurting their wallets) and stay home from the theatre. Don’t buy the DVD, just rent it and watch it once on your plasma screen TV. |
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