Cinema review
Directed by Adam Adamson
Starrring Ben Barnes, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Sergio Castellitto, Peter Dinklage, Warwick Davis
Release date 27 June 2008 (UK)

One year after they last visited Narnia, the Pevensie siblings are whisked back to the magical land – only to find that 1300 years have passed in Narnian time, and the land is now under the control of the brutal Telemarines. The children join forces with Prince Caspian (Barnes) and the remaining Narnians to overthrow the ruthless King Miraz (Castellitto)…

Director Andrew Adamson wasn’t kidding when he promised that the second Narnia film would contain battle scenes on a truly massive scale. The entire second half of the numbing 143-minute running time is dedicated to one long computer-enhanced battle as the Fascistic Telemarines and varied creatures of Narnia go to head to head. As this is a family movie there’s little real sense of danger or threat to these scenes – and obviously no intense limb-severing realism – meaning that the interminable on-screen action becomes rather boring after a while.

Elsewhere, Prince Caspian suffers from the same flaws as its predecessor – variable CGI, a sometimes plodding pace and, most crucially, an absence of real magic and wonder. There is also an old-fashioned quaintness to the young heroes and much of the dialogue – especially in the sentimental ending – which, to be fair, does come straight from the pages of C.S. Lewis. For comic relief you get the Eddie Izzard-voiced swashbuckling mouse Reepicheep - an intensely irritating CGI creation with a trade in poorly timed one-liners.

It’s not all bad. Warwick Davis (Willow) and Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) are great as an unstereotypical pair of Narnian dwarfs, while all of the returning child actors give much more assured performances than in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There are also a scattering of scenes that capture the creepy otherworldliness of the best fantasy – including one that allows for the brief return of Tilda Swinton’s White Witch. But these moments are few and far between in an often crushingly dull fantasy epic. James Skipp

VERDICT: 5/10
A middling follow up that features lots of big budget battles but little sense of magic.