I want to tread carefully with this review because “Prince Caspian” wasn’t necessarily a bad movie – it just wasn’t as good as it could have and should have been. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” was so good that “Prince Caspian” looks bad in comparison, despite having several standout efforts.

I’ll also add this disclaimer: I was sick and quite possibly feverish when I took this film in Sunday afternoon, so maybe that affected my overall enjoyment of the film. I don’t think so, but you might feel that it did.

“Prince Caspian” starts with the birth of a baby. The child is the son of Lord Miraz, who is the acting leader of the Telmarines until Prince Caspian takes the throne. Miraz orders Caspian’s death to assure his place on the throne and the reign of his child, but Caspian gets away and sounds a horn that brings Peter, Susan, Edmond and Lucy Pevensie back to Narnia to help Caspian and the Narnians defeat Lord Miraz and the Telmarines. The Pevensie kids are glad to be back in Narnia but they soon realize that 1,300 years have past, no one has seen Aslan for nearly as long and some of the animals that were cute and talkative before are now wild and fierce. What follows is the Pevensie’s finding their way to Caspian (it takes awhile) and then long, extended battle sequences. Some of which are exciting (the raid on Miraz’s castle, for instance), while others just drag and drag and drag.

Here’s what I liked: Peter Dinklage as Trumpkin the Dwarf, Eddie Izzard voicing Reepicheep the warrior mouse, and the beauty of New Zealand that doubles for Narnia. Dinklage is a terrific actor and he really gives a great performance here, as does Izzard who is always funny. The cinematography in this film is every bit as good as the first film.

Here’s what I didn’t like: The Pevensie kids, too many hard to understand Telmarines and way too much warfare. I’ve always found the Pevensie kids a bit dry and there is not much here that sways me the other way. It’s a good thing that Peter and Susan don’t come back to Narnia because they are weakest of the four. Some of the main Telmarines gave fine performances, but a few of them were hard to understand through their accents and there were just a lot of nameless Telmarines in the film, many of whom met their maker in the endless battle sequences.

I understand that the war between Narnia (magic) and the Telmarines (reality?) is a big part of the story here, but there’s not much different in the film’s final battle sequence, which lasts by my count close to 30 minutes, that is any different from the big battle at the end of the last film. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” had a lot of Aslan, a lot of the White Witch and a lot of magic – this had far less of all three.

C.S. Lewis’s books in this series were short, so obviously the makers of this film were trying to pad it a little bit, but I think they lost something in all their additions.

And maybe I was just having an off day.

**1/2

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