THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN

Well, it's not bad...It's not amazing either. It's Chinese take-out Summer entertainment. Yeah, it's good and filling, but it's not exactly the best and it's gone an hour later. There isn't much in the way of character development, except the surface-level character-types you'd expect in this type of film. It has similar faults to the first one.

Here, Peter Dinklage takes over James MacAvoy's sympathetic forest-creature role. Like his predecessor, he did his best to ring out as much character as he could from the little they gave him to work with.

Caspian suffers a bit from Lord of the Rings-itis. Man, that movie changed the game for fantasy directors. New fantasy films have got to stay away from any images reminiscent of LOTR, if they want to stand out. Here, there were way too many scenes, that had me going..."Didn't Arwen do that?"

This movie is really made for preteen girls. Forget the swordplay. I could actually hear the sighs of the young girls (and some old ones too) swooning over Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes). He truly is yumilicious. He reminds me of a prettier, older version of Atrayu from The Neverending Story.

...Look, I was in sixth grade when I was digging that kid. ...I'm just saying.

And of course, there's the angsty, slashy, conflict between him and Peter (William Moseley).

Still, this is better than the first one. It moves much quicker and there are even a few laughs. Just don't expect an outstanding film or anything heavier than National Treasure 2.

I recommend it as a matinée, especially for families with girls. Seriously, the pretty on that Ben Barnes kid completely fades the memory of Orlando Bloom as Legolas. There are big bloodless battles for the boys, too.

I also really like that the oldest girl, Susan was played by a gorgeous average-sized girl (Anna Popplewell) who still attracted male attention. Nope, I didn't hear the clackity-clack of knobby bones knocking on her. That's another step away from the singular ideal, we've got going for feminine beauty in this country.



PARENTS: Take your little girls! Unless you want to hold off on them discovering how pretty men can be.

P.S. I kept giggling every time the camera went to the Narnian minority, some random black centaur. For some reason, the camera kept focusing on him, even though he had maybe, one line.

P.P.S. I just looked Prince Caspian up. He's very legal at 27. That's O.K. to lust after, ladies.