Prince Caspian: Non-Spoilery Review - Warning: Comments now contain Big Huge spoilers!

[orichalcum]

Haiku Review:
Many battle scenes,
Susan and Lucy so rawk!
Very true to book.

Well, the diversity of official reviews seemed to suggest that either you would love or hate this movie. True enough, I loved it and cerebralpaladin hated it.

What did I love? How true it was to the book in many minor details, the immense coolness of both Susan and Lucy, my favorite Talking Animal of all time, Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard, folks! hca might want to see it for this alone, as Reepicheep seems like a very hcaish sort of character), and some gorgeous set and costume design work. You should keep in mind here that I'm probably a bigger fan of the Narnia books and world than of any other childhood series (maybe Prydain comes close, but both certainly beat Middleearth.) I think I read Prince Caspian at least 17 times (I stopped counting after I'd read all the books except Silver Chair and Last Battle 17 times), and so I'm the fangirl in the audience sitting there going, "Oh good, they've got the Brown Bear as one of the Heralds!" So for me, it really worked, in that it didn't tarnish any of my memories.

cerebralpaladin, while he liked the Narnia books as a kid, had virtually no memory of the plot. And well, he had some deep moral and tactical qualms with the way that Adamson chose to represent various scenes and choices. These really impaired his ability to enjoy the film.

So mostly, I would say, if you remember liking the book, you'll probably love the movie. If not - maybe less so.

And in an amusing non-spoilery note, they totally played on one of my major points of childhood confusion from the book - how exactly Edmund could have a _torch_ in his backpack.

N.B: cerebralpaladin has now listed his major objections in a spoilerific comment below; read at your own risk.

Comments

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I saw the preview before Iron Man and I was thinking that it looked a lot more interesting than the The Lion... movie had. Caspian was my favorite Narnia book as a child. However, I was the little Jewish girl who adored them until she got to The Last Battle, finally "got" the Jesus thing, got pissed off, and never looked at any of them again. So, what do you think? Is there a chance I'll like the movie? I do fear that, as digitalemur so delicately put it, I have a bit of the "CP brain."

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

I really don't know. I think there is a meaningful chance that you will run squarely into my problems. But I also think that they may not hit you the way they hit me. I just can't say. I explain them in substantial detail in my separate comments, but with vast amounts of spoilers.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

I think there's a very good chance you would like it, and there's certainly very little Jesus stuff here apart from a certain degree of "faith without proof is more virtuous."