Review: Prince Caspian

My four children, my husband and I are Narnia lovers. We devour the Radio Theatre of "The Chronicles of Narnia" when we go for long, or not so long drives in our vehicles. So going to the Narnia movies are like a national holiday in our house.

We went to the theatre at 3pm on it's opening day, only a tiny amount of "true Narnians" were in the cinema that day. We got the matinee' price, so what more could a person ask for?

I guess my own thoughts on the movie are that they didn't stick close enough to the book. C.S. Lewis had perfected it, so why change it? It was still a really good movie though.

I read a review on pluggedinonline.com about "Prince Caspian" and it mentioned there that the director made this movie more intense:

"Director Andrew Adamson seems well aware that he's pushing further than he did
before. "This film is probably a little darker and grittier than the last one,
partly because the children are older, making the story more adult in nature,"
he says. "In the last film, I think we went to some pretty dark places. Aslan's
death, certainly, is one of the darkest moments in the film. I think this movie
has the potential to be even more sinister. Miraz is potentially someone that we
might actually see in real life, which makes him and the story that much
darker." William Moseley, who plays Peter, adds, "The White Witch was scary, but
you've seen nothing until you've seen Miraz."

The violence/war scenes were decent in the fact that they were intentional on not showing any blood/guts. As a parent of a 6 year old, two 9 year olds and an 11 year old, I appreciated that immensely.

Some of the things that I was taken aback by in the movie was the tiny hint that there was an attraction between Susan and Caspian. I thought that this was unneccessary, and much too "what the world expects". I hated it at the end, when Susan kisses Caspian, how silly and it was totally out of character for her anyway. (By the way, my kids didn't appreciate that part of the movie at all~~they were squirming even before the 'kiss' had started....)

Another part of the movie that I thought that they horribly ruined was the scene when Lucy sees Aslan and tells the other children. In the book it is written as beautiful as poetry, standing for so much and saying an incredible amount about the relationships we all have with our real Aslan. (I blogged the excerpt of the book a few months ago.)

I still can't quite understand why they screwed with that part of the book. It just doesn't make sense.

I still enjoyed it though, and I will gladly go to all of the Narnia movies that Disney makes. I do wish though that they would talk to the writer/director over these movies so that they wouldn't change the really important parts of the book quite so much!

What are your thoughts?

P.S. I love Reepicheep in the books and radio theatre, he wasn't portrayed as well in the movie.

~B