Movie Review: Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Rating: 3 stars out of 10

Insult Index: 8 stars out of 10

Directed: Adam Adamson (talk about an Alan Smithee name...)

Rated: PG for chopping things heads off and gutting nonbelievers.

Runtime:147 min USA:144 min (they knew Americans have a shorter attention span for boring movies)

The children return to Narnia, only to discover that 1300 years have passed since they kinda ruled there, and the evil General/King Miraz has taken charge and killed almost all of the native Narnians except an annoying mouse named Reekcheese or something. With the help of the exiled heir to the throne, Prince Caspian, they set out to overthrow the King. This time Aslan is taking the training wheels off and allows the little knuckleheads to scrape their knees a bit before he calls in the big guns to wipe out the bad guys in a CG filled, mind numbing, and utterly predictable ending - even if you were cool and didn't read this shit as a kid.

Watching this movie was actually pretty tough. In the end it took three free refills (three-bagger) of popcorn to make it feel like I got any value at all.

The really insulting stuff started about two-thirds the way through - at the start of the final battle scenes. First Miraz has his siege machines roll up and before I could say anything, my wife leans over and mentions that they look like they came straight from the "Return of the King" set. Then somebody (Aslan/the kids) summon up a bunch of trees to take out Miraz's sorry ass army. Yes, walking trees that know who to kill and who to spare. The only difference from the LOTR was that these trees were faceless and without personality, kinda like this fucking movie.

I leaned over to my wife and said, "they can't do this." Then the trees started running and kicking ass and I leaned over to my wife again and said, "they can't fucking do this." That's when I got the big Shhhh face. I still felt ripped off and so I decided to go back for another free popcorn, while only intending to eat a few bites.

Well, this fucking movie goes on for another hour and I ate half the damn bag and drank another coke. Anyway, the kids save Narnia again and we get an appropriate amount of excited utterances: "look out!" and "who's that!" plus an earful of phony "my lieges" at the end. My god what a rip off.

Finally, the whole Christian thing. It isn't and leave it at that. I can see why Muslims riot when Muhammad is depicted in pictures. Hollywood doesn't know shit about religion and always ends up insulting everyone anytime they touch the subject. Hell, I wanted to riot as a sign of solidarity. I can see the headline on Drudge: "Man flogs himself in theater after Narnia insults his religion..."

P.S. The three bags of popcorn with the required amount of coke to wash it down added an inch to my waistline as a final insult. It took three days to work that poundage off and less than a minute to forget this awful sequel.