Plot: The Pevensies (Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, and Anna Popplewell) find themselves pulled back into Narnia after Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) sounds the alarm. For the kids, it's been a year, for the Narnians, overthrown by the Telmarines and forced into hiding, awaiting the return of Aslan (v. Liam Neeson) and the kings and queens of old, it's been centuries.Oh, dear. It's a shame I liked the first one so much, really, because this one is so disappointing by comparison. It's the fourth book as per my current boxed set, although I'm not surprised that they jumped ahead to this one. The Pevensies are peripheral to the action in The Horse and his Boy. It looks like they will continue on ahead with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader next. Ah, well.
The kids are much better than I remember them, particularly Keynes as Edmund and Henley as Lucy. We'll see more of them in the upcoming movies than the other two. They had better make them quick, though. They're both growing up fast. It's too bad, as well, that we'll see less of Moseley in particular. He makes Peter's teenage entitlement believable, and the fact that he has a reason to feel that way (he was High King, after all) makes Peter pitiable rather than irritating.
As for the biggest recent addition? He's pretty, but Barnes is encumbered by the attempted Spanish (?) accent, and by figuring out how to act a powerful sexual attraction in a quasi-religious* children's movie. I suspect that's a difficult thing. Maybe he'll grow on me in future installments.
*Why the quasi? While I still think the supposal was deftly handled in the first outing, there's nothing particularly Christian in this one. The focus was more on fighting.
Director and co-writer (with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) Andrew Adamson has surer footing this time. The movie's surprisingly tense for the fact that it's also often boring. I suspect a lot of the tension derives from the fact that these are children throwing themselves into battle, and they do it without Aslan there to protect them. Lucy sits a lot of it out on principle (not that anyone comes out and says that). The Narnians, led by the incomparbly voiced Eddie Izzard as Reepicheep, are as wonderfully eclectic as the first time around. Peter Dinklage is especially good as Trumpkin.
I just wish there had been more for them to do. It takes a long time to build to the big, climatic battle in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and it should. It's about how faith in things unseen pays off. This movie just has such an in between-er feel that I wonder what will become of the other five. C+
No comments:
Post a Comment