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In 'Prince Caspian' we return to an altered and savage Narnia and more fantasy adventure to delight the family. You get great affects, battle scenes, talking animals and a pretty close rendition of the book. I have to say that I found this more enjoyable than 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' with the slightly darker elements to the story fitting the fantasy adventure theme a lot better. The children stars of this film annoy me as actors and Prince Caspians accent reminded me of Puss in Boots from Shrek at times, but overall the acting was OK and didn't detract from the story. It manages to achieve what it set out to, that is, a fun family adventure and manages to keep you interested and watching for the duration, which didn't feel overly long as the story kept pushing forward. A good film that is worth watching if you were a fan of the first installment or of fantasy films in general.

Now you all have seen Narnia 2 and that was abismal this film has sunk to a whole new level of pants. The Novel was or would have been 20x better then the film i grantee. I was so bord in the cinema that started chucking food (Popcorn) around the room and this old man who was around 70 by his looks and he gave me evils. Now this film is worse then enchanted and Jaws 4 and even the grudge. I would raver bye the film Doggy Poo! Its that bad I give this poor film 1/5 atchualy i must this is so bad its like watching High school mucisal! So Bad I would rather die then watch it again. I din't buy this poor exsuse for a film i was forced to see it and i really hated it and the reason i looked it up was to tell you it was abismal, so here i go! IT WAS ABISMAL

I realise this is a childrens film... but it's dire. Like scream out loud dire. And long enough to make you wonder 'why did I just waste a significant part of my life to this?' The first half is pretty decent but then come the battle scenes. Moronic tosh. Oh so many pregnant pauses - mid battle - while people stop and gaze in to the distance... so many blatant copies of Lord Of The Rings scenes but without the style or competence... so many opportunities to kill the bad guy which are not taken... I walked away from the TV multiple times because it was, well, so crap. Frustrating crap at that. Avoid at all costs and watch LOTR instead.

Not a young kids film but adults to 9 year olds will love it and play it again and again. The best fantasy adventure film since the Lord of the Rings trilogy and at times it is better than LOTR.

I got this for my 3 boys (10-12) for Christmas. We sat down to watch it and from the open sequence it is all out action with numerous twists and turns, that even I as a lifelong fan of the books was surprised constantly through the 2 hours and 20 odd mins with.

Its not a faithful adaption of the book but close enough but the changes to the original tale really work tremendously well and make this yarn exciting and surprising from start to finish.

The effects are as good as the best CGI and the characters superb, with many of them acting their socks off. I love the telmerine Lord Protector and his General and Lords, they really get the machiavellian aspect of the Court and its intrigues just right.

Prince Caspian and the young Kings and Queens are tremendous as well with just the right amount of seriousness and laughs. The other characters such as the dwarfs, centaurs and Reepicheep the mouse, well words fail me fantastic again.

Oh and lets not forget the White Witch who makes a quite seductive and scary entry for a short period.

This is a dark story with some real tear jerking moments and many awesome battle scenes.

The Lion,Witch,Wardrobe was tame for me, this is so very much better and quite honestly I find it hard to believe it is Disney.

One of the Best films I've seen in years.

What makes CS Lewis's Narnia "septet" so timeless is that the books work on 2 levels - straightforward 'fantasy' for children and a 'deeper' symbolic allegory of Christian faith.
This turned out fortunately for film-makers like Disney wanting to jump on the Tolkien/Rowling fantasy bandwagon. Children in the 1940s and 1950s didn't need more explicit biblical references putting in the books because British Christians then grew up like Muslims today - their faith was not an optional add on but an integral, 'living' aspect of their existence. They were familiar with what Lewis's allegories were without needing them spelled out. Today, in Britain's almost totally secular society, the fact that Lewis didn't lay the Christian theme on with a trowel means that modern kids can take the series at 'face value' but still learn the lessons the series tried to impart to readers.
The lesson of Prince Caspian was about the importance of faith, hope and the dangers of pride and arrogance. With both Caspian and Lion, I went to see each film with eagerness but trepidation because it would be too easy to lose those - and the whole point of the books.
But Prince Caspian doesn't disappoint. Other reviews have summarised the plot and what has been included/excluded, but though Ben Barnes as Caspian is a bit passive at first in the film, it does stick mostly to the book and the themes therein, which is vital - there has never been a decent film version of Conan-Doyle's Lost World because everyone who's ever been near it has used inverted snobbery to turn Lord John Roxton into a villain and insist on shoehorning in a love interest.
In Caspian, Peter in particular falls into the trap of pride, angrily rebuking Lucy when she reminds him who really defeated the White Witch, and arrogance in assuming that beacuse he was Peter the Magnificent he can pick up 1300 years later where he left off. Caspian indirectly causes the death of the Narnian attackers because he lets anger get the better of him instead of remembering others rely on him. The film, like the book, also makes the point of how foolish and arrogant it is to disregard people because they are different or too young/old - everyone believes Lucy is delusional because she is the youngest, but the point is that the young have no artifice, and are 'naturally' honest.
The film also fleshes out Queen Prunaprismia, Caspian's aunt, who in the book was nothing more than a plot device, and both Lord Sopespian and Glozelle.
The one weakness with the film and why I have given it 3 stars, is not it's fault. I cannot for the life of me understand why the first film was Lion, and not The Magician's Nephew, which was set in Sherlock Holmes' London of the 1890s. During Lion I had to explain to my companion how Jadis the White Witch got to Narnia, how Diggory Kirke got a magic wardrobe and how he knew it was so, and how the lamp-post got into the Waste. All these are explained in the first book, and tie in to the last book, when some of the original characters appear.
Another issue that The Horse and His Boy weren't filmed before Caspian. This book was set during the Golden Age of Narnia when the 4 Pevensie's were adults, and sets up much of the Telmarine plotline and outlying kingdoms, etc for Caspian; it also sets up much of Susan's angst in Caspian, the book which informs much of the controversy of her outcome in later books.
But Caspian the film makes a valiant stab at showcasing how difficult it was for them back in London. They still retained their memories of being adults with tremendous personal and national power (in Horse, Susan comes within a whisker of marrying a foreign king to avert war, showing they were grown-ups with grown-up lives and international concerns); Susan's disenchantment because she knows the joy of Narnia only lasts whle she's there is very poignant - once she gets back to London she'll be a powerless teenage girl dismissed by everyone and treated as 'disrespectful' if she says and does things 'beyond her age'. In short, the Pevensie children no longer fit in the 'real world' and Susan is the only one who seems willing to openly acknowledge that being part of Narnia has a downside Aslan can't fix, even before having to accept all their friends died of old age centuries before.