STUDIO: Disney
RELEASE DATE: May 16, 2008
STARRING: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Ben Barnes, Peter Dinklage, Warwick Davis, Sergio Castellitto, Liam Neeson, and Tilda Swinton
WRITTEN BY: Andrew Adamson & Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
DIRECTED BY: Andrew Adamson
GENRE: Fantasy
RATING: PG

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian seems to be the exception to a personal feast-or-famine response to modern fantasy films. Of course, the Lord of the Rings movies are cinematic perfection, and I also surprisingly adored the last three Harry Potter movies (and anxiously anticipate the continuations of both of those franchises in the final HP movies and in The Hobbit). But my own personal movie-viewing Hell will feature screenings of such recent fantasy flicks as Eragon, The Seeker, The Golden Compass, and, yes, the first Narnia movie on a continuous loop. I even tried sitting through The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe again the day of the screening of its sequel, Prince Caspian, and I couldn't make it. The first film is visually sumptuous, but it's also unacceptably slow, smug, and self-aware of its own "importance." So, no one is more shocked than I that Prince Caspian breaks the recent feeble-fantasy curse and excels as a fairly strong adventure yarn. It may be the first "good" (not great but not bad) fantasy film of the new era, a movie that is very likely to satisfy fans of the original (and C.S. Lewis' source material) and may even win over a few converts like myself, a moviegoer who is unlikely to be more surprised this year than he was at his positive response to Prince Caspian.

Why do the second films of major franchises always have to be so dark? The Empire Strikes Back and The Two Towers are undeniably more vicious and black than Star Wars or Fellowship of the Ring. Honestly, you could lump the first two Chris Columbus Potter movies together as one failure and the pattern would continue with Prisoner of Azkaban. Prince Caspian is significantly darker and more violent than the first Narnia film, to the point where even its PG rating is ridiculous. Under any studio banner other than Disney, this movie definitely would have earned a PG-13. It features a lot of death and bloodshed and, if you take the little ones, you may have some tough questions to answer, and not just about the Jesus/Aslan parallel.

The bleak tone of Prince Caspian starts before the credits with an assassination attempt on the title character (Ben Barnes). Caspian escapes the citadel of the Telmarines, the group of mortals who have taken over the land of Narnia. It's been 1,300 years since the action of the first film, but time doesn't move the same in the real world as it does in Narnia. Our four heroes, Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy Pevensie (Georgie Henley), are transported back to the land of Narnia when Caspian blows a magic horn that once belonged to Susan. They find a land where the magical creatures that once ruled the day have been forced underground and turned into figures of myth. Thus Caspian and the Pevensies lead a revolt of the old school Narnians against the evil dictatorship to reclaim Narnia for pious talking animals and strikingly handsome heirs to the throne everywhere. The lion (still voiced by Liam Neeson and still clearly a Christ figure - "Maybe we're the ones that need to prove ourselves to him.") and even the witch (Tilda Swinton) make brief appearances, which should please fans of the original film, but there's no sign of a wardrobe and James McAvoy's Mr. Tumnus is, I'm assuming, long dead.

If you haven't inferred it yet, there is plenty of swordfighting in Prince Caspian, as the majority of the slightly-too-long running time consists of two extended battle sequences, one in the Telmarine stronghold and one outside the bunker of the forest creatures. They're both incredibly well-structured and well-executed battle sequences that serve as the highlight of the movie (and the franchise so far). The first film dragged its feet too long with extended tracking shots and talking badgers, but Caspian feels much more crisply paced and confident on every level. The four young stars have developed from "fresh faces" into good, bordering on great, actors. The two older Pevensies, Peter and Susan, in particular, do very assured work here, grounding the film in reality. That's the best thing about Caspian that most of the other recent fantasy failures have missed - making the actors feel like more than CGI creations adds an incredibly important weight to the battle scenes that a billion-dollar gift certificate to the WETA Workshop simply couldn't buy.

On every level, Prince Caspian feels more accomplished than The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and director Andrew Adamson has paced the film significantly better, even if the dragging first hour and the ridiculously long denouement hold the film back from greatness. And there are a few sequences - including a stunner with Swinton - that simply are must-sees for the summer. The fact is, with Prince Caspian, Narnia has grown up. And maybe the entire modern fantasy genre has along with it.