Galloping centaurs, a swashbuckling mouse, cool bad guys, way cooler good guys, girls that kick butt and just enough spiritual undertones for some Christians to think that it's about them.
What's not to like in the new “Narnia” sequel?
When “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” opens today, audiences will see a darker, funnier sister to the original epic adventure film that was a box-office smash when it debuted in 2005.
Director Andrew Adamson has unleashed his inner Shrek (he also was involved with that series), teaming up with the writing crew of the original “Narnia” screenplay to add comic relief to “Caspian.” More on that later.
Like the first “Narnia,” “Caspian” is beautifully photographed with imagery and sets befitting the medieval mythology that C.S. Lewis, creator of this children's book series, so loved. Heroes are bathed in light and enemies shrouded in the darkness of an isolated castle that oozes evil.
Like the first “Narnia,” which won an Oscar for makeup, the creatures – both the computer-generated ones and those created with wigs and cosmetics – are stunning. And like the first “Narnia,” this venture between Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media is nearly 2½ hours long.
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“The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”
Rated: PG
Opens: Today
Running time: 2 hr., 20 min.
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But the sequel kicks everything up a notch.
The fight scenes are more intense, punctuated with marvelous special effects – giant birds that carry warriors into battle, thundering hordes of sinister soldiers, and more than enough nobility to assure you that this is definitely a just war between good and evil. And the violence is sanitized enough to keep the PG rating.
The wicked witch from the first movie is gone, though she does make an icy cameo. She is replaced by the wicked King Miraz, Prince Caspian's creepy uncle, played deliciously by Sergio Castellitto. Gone, too, is the iconic lamp post (too fairy tale for this earnest saga).
Even the Pevensie children, back as the kings and queens of this fantasy kingdom, are more complex.
The movie begins with Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy back in England with their school chums during World War II. A year has passed since they had their first Narnia escapade, and they are missing the time when they were heroes and not just uniform-wearing students.
Soon they are whisked back to Narnia, courtesy of a London subway station. More than 1,000 years have gone by in that kingdom and time has not been kind. What is left of the magical creatures have been driven underground or rendered dormant by the fierce Telmarine army, led by Miraz.
It is Prince Caspian who has summoned them, blowing Susan's legendary horn in a moment of desperation as he flees the castle for his life. A teenage boy himself, about the same age as Peter, Caspian is taken aback by his would-be rescuers. “I thought you would be older,” he says. “You're not exactly what I expected.”
Therein lies the key to the fantasy: a place where children and even the lowest creatures of the forest really matter.
William Moseley, the English actor who plays Peter, says he was struck by the magnitude of this second project. “It's a bigger film,” he says in a phone interview. “Everything has been upped a level.”
Only about a third of the first Narnia was shot on location, he says. In this one, two-thirds was on location (New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia).
“It was really exciting,” says the 21-year-old Moseley. “I think they (audiences) are going to be blown away by how it's been stepped up.”
He doesn't see it as a Christian film and says no one on the set talked about the faith elements infused by Lewis, who in addition to being a lover of medieval literature was a prolific writer in defense of Christianity.
Moseley thinks people will have to look closely for religious underpinnings. “I think audiences just mostly want to be entertained,” he says. Instead, he sees moral lessons about caring for the environment (there's a ghastly scene of enemy soldiers destroying trees to build a bridge) and a reminder to defiant teenagers of the importance of family.
For those who do look closely, they will see a David-and-Goliath style battle, a lesson in believing in things that cannot yet be seen and redemptive messages of second chances even for sinners.
As for the comic relief, it will draw laughs from some and irritation from others who find the campiness distracting.
There's a wisecracking dwarf who gets slapped up the head by Miraz only to retort: “And you wonder why we don't like you.”
A sword-fighting mouse could be the understudy for Antonio Banderas' Puss in Boots character in the “Shrek” movies. When the good guys storm the castle, the mouse takes time to tie up the mouth of a cat before slaying a soldier. Talk about ruining the moment.
When Moseley saw the finished product, he found those elements fun. “I think it brought great relief to the audience,” he says. “When we were shooting, I wondered if it was going to have too much battle in it.”
Peter isn't the only heartthrob in this new film. Enter Prince Caspian, played by Ben Barnes, a 26-year-old English actor and relative unknown (unless you saw him in “The History Boys” on London's West End).
He's dashing, though he could lose the Ricky Ricardo accent.
Barnes also says the off-scene conversations never drifted toward Lewis' religious symbolism. Which was fine with him. “If you're aware of it, you'll play up to it,” he says in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “I think you have to concentrate moment to moment on the story.”
“The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” is a good story and a good film. Now it's on to No. 3, when the prince becomes king and not all of the Pevensie children will be young enough to return to their make-believe lives. Stay tuned for “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” due out in 2010.
Sandi Dolbee: (619) 293-2082; sandi.dolbee@uniontrib.com
