Tried hard to resist the temptation to see Andrew Adamson's second envisioning of C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series, Prince Caspian, but buckled as soon as I saw that it was 3 hours long. Figured three hours of vegin' out while watching talking animals and trees battle imperialist dogs would be fun, more fun than staring at the wall wondering which book I should be reading. Note that the bear representation was not as strong as I was hoping, but there were two bears featured within the narrative and a chivalrous mouse named Reepicheep voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Prince Caspian struck me as the iconic 3 out of 5 stars film. It's nothing special, a lot of the acting is brutal, good enough to spout one-dimensional lines about leadership and victory, not too strong when it comes to dealing with the complex subtleties of historic emotion, although the plot proceeds too quickly to allow for such developments.
Yup, 3 out of 5. I didn't dislike it, I could watch it with my family, and if I was 10, I'd probably continue to think it's exceptional until I was at least 17. A lot of the scenes are ridiculous, some of them are kind of fun, and Anna Popplewell has a fletching beauty that causes one to quiver more and more intensely with every drawn arrow. On the ideological side, the story seems to be saying that talking animals and environmental activism are playthings for children, and that when one grows up, they will 'austerely' leave these subjects behind. And that British children are capable of leading a successful revolution against tyrannical monarchs but can only succeed with the help of a magical lion. It would be nice if an auteur would transform one of these legendary narratives into something bizzare, rather than sticking to the conventional plot designs. Return of the King directed by Guy Maddin. Now there's a best picture.
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