My hubby and I have started a new tradition of going to the movies on Monday nights. Last night, we decided to see a family film, and we ended up seeing Prince Caspian. I was less than thrilled going into the movie because I knew it was more than 2 hours long (147 minutes, to be exact) and I was not overly impressed with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Before I get further into this critique, I need to discuss my feelings about books made into movies. I have rarely been impressed with the film version of any of my favorite books. The only exception to this that I can think of is the Lord of the Ring series...which I thought was excellent...the portrayal of Gollum alone made the films successful adaptations of the books. I have come to realize that the movie version will NEVER be as good as the book. However, for some reason I still get excited when they announce that there will be a film made of any of my favorite books...and I still enjoy the movies, to an extent. For example, the writers of the Harry Potter movies obviously took some liberties that are frustrating to the avid reader, but we can't expect an 804 page book to be condensed to anything less than an 8 hour movie...and most 8 hour movies don't do so well at the box office. So I can enjoy a movie that was based on a book, as long as I am able to seperate, or enmesh the two. One helpful aspect of the Harry Potter series is that the first movie was made before the books were compeleted, which allowed many people to use the movie characters as the basis for the characters in the book...which makes the more recent films more enjoyable (because we already imagined these people as the characters...Alan Rickman will forever be Snape for me...).
However, having said all that, I will now say...I LOVED Prince Caspian! Let me explain...I clearly remember reading the first of the Narnia Chronicles several times, since I was in second grade. I could visualize in my head each of the characters, as well as the complete story. So when I watched the movie, I was rather disappointed with some of the characters (specifically Susan...and having James McAvoy play a faun...that's just wrong!), but I was pleased with how closely the writers stuck to the storyline of the book. With Prince Caspian, I can't remember a single thing about reading that book, which made the movie soooo much better for me. In fact, I remember watching the old BBC version of the entire series, and so far the American version rocks in comparison (shocking, I know...). Many people may have complaints about this version of Prince Caspian because it really does not follow the book, and there are several aspects of the film that might be frustrating to serious Narnia fans (because most of it does not come from our friend C.S. but from the mind of Andrew Adamson, who gave us such films as the Shrek movies...and nothing else). I would highly recommend this fun family film to anyone...however, there are some rather scary characters, so little ones might not want to watch. These characters are not as scary (or as well made) as the orcs in the Lord of the Rings (those things still give me nightmares!), but still pretty horrifying for a child. Overall...three pigs.
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