The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

I've thought about it and thought about it, and I can't quite put my finger on why the new Chronicles of Narnia film, Prince Caspian, doesn't work. I think the real reason is that there is more than one reason.

First of all, there's Prince Caspian. He awakes with a start one morning at the prompting of his teacher to find that he had better escape the castle. A male heir has been born to his uncle, and his uncle wants him to have the throne. As he's escaping through the woods, he meets the Narnians, who, after getting over the shock that they're helping him escape, befriend him and he agrees to help them overcome their enemy, his own species.

In the middle of all of this, the four Pevensie children, after a year of being imprisoned in a boring world -- ours -- are whisked back to Narnia, only to find out that they're a bit late. 1,300 years late. The Narnians are gone. The palace has crumbled. And Aslan, the magnificent lion, is nowhere in sight.

Caspian and the children clash, and nobody seems to be in charge here. And, on top of that, several bad decisions are made, decisions which lead to death of many Narnians. We had met some really cute swashbuckling mice in the forest, and the idea that some of them are suffering is just too hard for a child to take.

In fact, I wouldn't recommend this film at all to children, and only to adults who can appreciate the sets and the kind of special effect that could mold a man to a horse to make a centaur. Otherwise, it's too dark, it's too gruesome, and it's too heartbreaking. The moments in the first film where we marvelled at this new world, we giggled at the silliness of some of it, are gone.

Pass on this Part 2 of the Chronicles of Narnia. Thumb's down.