Movie Review: The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian

I always feel a certain amount of sympathy towards those who attempt to adapt beloved stories into movies. No matter what they do, there will be always someone who will find something to criticize. The majority of the time the criticisms revolve — often unfairly — around changes made to the story necessitated by the process of adaptation. Whether it's a character omitted or a subplot trimmed, most adaptations are forced to truncate the original story because of the time constraints of the medium.

When I go to see an adaptation of a book that I've really enjoyed, I do my best to try and look past the the story as it unfolds on the screen and focus on how well they've managed to recapture the spirit or intent of the original. The last three installments of the Harry Potter series — Prisoner Of Azkaban, Goblet Of Fire, and Order Of The Phoenix — all took liberties with the source material but did such a great job of bringing the world and the characters to life and capturing the essence of each book that they worked.

After having been pleasantly surprised by the excellent job done in bringing the first book of C.S. Lewis' Narnia stories,The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, to life, I was looking forward to enjoying the second movie, The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian, just as much. Not able to get out to movie theaters easily and too impatient to wait for its release on DVD, I downloaded a DivX version from a legitimate site (not that I'm worried about depriving the Disney Corp. of a few bucks, but I don't trust file sharing sites so I'm more than willing to pay $1.99 for a copy of a movie that I can play on my computer). Unfortunately, and almost right from the start, Prince Caspian fell far short of the mark set by its predecessor, as those responsible took what was a straightforward story and complicated it needlessly with subplots, burying the book's themes of faith and belief to the point at which they were almost unrecognizable.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the forthcoming book What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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