What is the measure of a good movie? No, really... to what do we measure a movie by? Is it the box office results? Is it the acting? Is it the film making? Is it the story? Is it some combination of all these things? And when adapting a story from a novel, does the adaption also factor into this equation? I ask all these questions because it goes to the heart of my movie review. By any other name, Prince Caspian is complex.
I read the books when I was a kid. I remember that I liked them, but that's all I remember. So, as an adaption, I can't really compare. It has Aslan in it and the Pevensie children and some talking animals and they talk about Narnia. That's about what I remember from the book, so in that regard, it matches my memory of the adaption.
It's box office results were good for a movie opening before Memorial Day. I imagine this film will have long legs and that once it gets into the summer holiday it might see a resurgence in box office. But quite frankly, I think Disney made a huge mistake launching it when it did - but I realize that they didn't want to compete with Wall-E or with Harry Potter in the fall. That leaves only a few times to launch the film. So they will get what they can in terms of box office and still call it a success.
The acting was fine, but the first chinks in the armor start to show. The accents were horrible. I don't know who's idea it was to have them speak with a Spanish accent - but it was probably the same dialog guy who advised George Lucas on his accents. The end result was a laughable mishmash of accents that made me wonder if the film was being made by Pedro Almodovar. Beyond the accents, I found the actor who played Peter to be quite horrible - as I did in the first Narnia film. Granted, the writing for his role was rather stiff, so I'm sure that didn't help. As with the first movie, the bright spot was the young lady who played Lucy. She is quite the find.
The film making was marred by the exact same problem as the first one - the sound. Now, I'm not a sound genius. I don't pretend to be a sound expert or a sound designer. But if I can't hear the dialog because the music is blaring too loud or the clash of sound effects are drowning them out then you really ought to fire the people who do your sound mix. This was what ruined the first half hour of the first Narnia movie as well. The sound isn't bad throughout, just at some key times. Now, I might be inclined to say that I'm having hearing problems, except, of course, that I heard every word of Iron Man and Speed Racer and every show I've watched for the last two years in between Narnia 1 and 2. So, I'm going to guess the sound sucks and leave it at that.
The other glaring problem is that the CGI tends to look like CGI. This is not the fault of the special effects guys - there is really a limit to what the technology can do. I find that it is more the problem of the director not knowing what to do with the CGI. There are moments in Caspian where the CGI is quite good - like the final battle with the trees. Those trees scared the heck out of me. And Aslan looks much better in this movie than he did in the first one. The opening sequence where the kids were drawn into Narnia is also quite good and Reepicheep is exceptional as a character. But then there are climactic moments like the River Jesus (that's what AICN called it, and I'm afraid the description is quite apt) that look really fake. But throughout, with very few exceptions, the CGI does not transport you the way it did in the LOTR trilogy.
And so finally, we are left with the story. Unlike The Golden Compass, I could actually follow the story here. It was a bit spotty at times, but it was better than some of the adaptions I've seen. In fact, the length of the movie assured me that the adaption had to be pretty close. But beyond the plot and the story arcs, I want to say that with few exceptions the writing left me very indifferent. I didn't really warm to any of the new characters and was positively annoyed by 3/4ths of the kids. So, for the most part, the writing was very weak.
But where the movie really did shine were in the purely C.S. Lewis moments - which is true irony for a movie that seems embarrassed to embrace this theological story. Whenever Aslan is on the screen, the movie just moves to a new level. Whenever Lucy is talking about Narnia with Aslan there, the movie just gets brighter - as if we can almost see what it is that Lucy is talking about. Aslan is not all love and brightness in this film. He has a definite edge to him. He almost seems a little dangerous. And the film makers didn't shy away from that angle. With the end result of all this being that Narnia once again becomes a place that you want to visit, that you want to experience, and that you want to live. This was, I think, the central point of writing the Chronicles of Narnia - to open an incredible new world of a relationship with God to children the world over. I found myself dreaming about this world last night with a big smile on my face.
Like I said, its a complex movie that has a lot of negative points against it. But in the end, I will say that I liked it - barely. The thoughts of Aslan and the smile it left on my face for Narnia overcame many of the problems I had with the film. To be fair, out of all the Harry Potter films and Narnia films, this is the first one that I can actually put in the Like column. All the rest just barely missed out on being liked (no matter how much I wanted to like them).
I won't go see this film again, but I can recommend that you go and see it, especially if you want to remember what it was like to believe in Aslan again.
2 comments:
I think Disney/Walden decided to play down the theology for this movie, although that's not that difficult as the novel was the "least religious" of the series. I haven't seen it, but my daughter liked it enough to see it twice.
Cheers.
Ouch. You really take the air out of the tires, man. My expectations are lowered.
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