Product: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Two Disc Edition + BD-Live) [Blu-ray] (2008)
Rating: 2.0
Trust me... You can do much better....
When the first film came out I saw it right away. I have read all the books numerous times and thoroughly enjoyed each one. While I thought they could have done better with the first film I also recognized that one can only do so much in film adaptions of stories like these. I eagerly anticipated the second film, hoping that it would pick up the slack where the first movie failed and build upon it to make the series great.Boy, was I disappointed.Prince Caspian is (unfortunately) a shining example with what is wrong with the fantasy film genre today. Let me take you through just a few of the arguments I have with this film:1. Actors/Acting - The formula Disney seems to be taking with these films is one we have seen way too many times before: Hire a cast of cute/adorable budding young "actors", maybe throw in a teen heartthrob character (in this case Prince Caspian) and if he can speak in an accent even better! Then cross your fingers and hope that the fact that almost none of them can act will be covered up by their charming good looks. This is terrible and inexcusable. There are plenty of cute AND talented actors out there. This just makes me think they went with the cutest kids they could find and said "Hey do you want to be in a BIG MOVIE?" Now I know this is not the case, but still they could have done so much better.2. Music - Blah... more of the same. Which in itself might not be too bad if it was given new life. but it really did feel like a rehash of the same stuff we heard in the first film.3. Cinematography - Ahh! This has really been bothering me and it is something that has bothered me since the first film. This film suffers... yes SUFFERS... from "Lord of the Rings" syndrome. Ever since Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings trilogy (which was brilliant) and Hollywood found out that big epic films with sprawling landscapes and enormous battle scenes will make bank at the box office they have been obsessed with recreating the success of LOTR. The problem of this is while this concept works well with LOTR, it doesn't necessarily work well on EVERY fantasy film. Maybe if more time was put into story development in this film, and less time into crazy special effects and overwhelming battle sequences we might have a film worth seeing. Seriously, how many times are we going to see a battle of millions of little computer generated sprites with catapults before it gets old. Its already old for me.These things are just a taste of the flaws of this film, the list could go on. I only give this movie a 2 star rating because, although it is terrible, it is watchable (Although I would not advise you to do so).If you are looking for a well thought out and enjoyable fantasy film that you can keep coming back to... trust me... look elsewhere.