An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Charlotte O'Sullivan's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Andrew Adamson.
Cast: Georgie Henley, William Moseley, Skandar Keynes, Anna Popplewell, Ben Barnes
Description: It has been a year since the Pevensie children - Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy - returned from the magical kingdom where they ruled as kings and queens. The experience has changed them deeply, especially Peter, who is frustrated to be a boy again. The children are unexpectedly summoned back to the enchanted realm by Prince Caspian, rightful heir to the Telmarine throne, who has been banished by his murderous uncle Miraz. Caspian intends to bring peace to the land but to do so requires an army to overthrow Miraz.
Country: US. 2008. 144mins
Soft, crooning Spanish accent: Prince Caspian
Heart-throb: Prince Caspian is bound to send teenage females into convulsions
Lion king: CS Lewis's Narnia novels on the big screen
The Prince Charming at the heart of this adventure has eyes like a girl and talks with a soft, crooning Spanish accent. Basically, if Calista Flockhart and Enrique Iglesias were to have a child, it would look and sound like Caspian.
CS Lewis wrote seven novels about Narnia and - according to the reading order he recommended - Prince Caspian should come fourth in the series. Disney has chosen it as the second instalment of its planned complete chronicles. The studio has generally amplified the prince's role and, helped by British hopeful Ben Barnes, turned him into a clean-cut heart-throb guaranteed to send teenage females into convulsions.
This is director Andrew Adamson's second go at the franchise. His fitfully gripping 2005 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a box-office success and introduced cinema-goers to the Pevensies. The four middle-class Blitz kids (Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy) stumble into the far-away kingdom of Narnia, a beleaguered Utopia dominated by a divine lion called Aslan.
Last time around, the kids defeated Tilda Swinton's evil White Witch. Now (a year later in British time, 1,300 years as far as Narnia is concerned) they face a more prosaic enemy. Lord Miraz ( Italian actor Sergio Castellitto) is nominal leader of the Telmarines, a race of humans who long ago declared war on the Old Narnians (talking centaurs, fauns, badgers, dwarfs etc). Now Miraz, whose wife has just given birth to a son, wants to consolidate his power by getting rid of his nephew, Caspian - the country's rightful ruler - and wiping out the Narnians. His language is genocidal. And it turns out he's committed a fair bit of skulduggery closer to home. Can Caspian, with the help of the Pevensies and Aslan, assemble an army capable of defeating this swine?
Prince Caspian has a very simple plot, but feels complicated. Its tone is all over the place, its rhythms screwy. One minute we're drowning in soporific visuals and wifty-wafty singing; the next we're being asked to cheer on interminable battles - battles led by homicidal kid-heroes (Edmund wields a crossbow in this holy war, Peter beheads a man). Prince Caspian wants to be dark, wants to be adorable, wants to show off its SFX budget. So it ends up a fudge: dark-lite.
The White Witch was the best thing about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She's the best thing here, too; skeletal, scornful and sexier than ever - the ultimate femme fatale. Alas, she's only on screen for five minutes.
Maybe the whole thing comes a Narniamillennium too late for me. Were I a 10-year-old today, I'd probably love it. Oblivious to the bad acting (Anna Popplewell, as Susan, is flagrantly wooden) I'd simply gorge on its exotic ingredients: the time travel; Lucy's special relationship with Aslan; Edmund's wisecracks, the swaggering, bizarrely beautiful centaurs; the kamikaze mouse, Reepicheep (voiced by the ever reliable Eddie Izzard); the borderline-clinicallydepressed dwarf, Trumpkin.
As an adult, however, one can only mourn the might-have-beens. Lewis's writing pales besides that of his great friend, Tolkien but Prince Caspian (Lewis at his most pagan) contains some nice surprises. Take the description of Aslan's friend, Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, a sticky-fingered fellow whose face, we're told, "would have been almost too pretty for a boy's, if it had not looked so extremely wild... there were lots of girls with him, as wild as he ...". "There's a chap who might do anything," says an impressed Edmund, "absolutely anything."
Here was a chance for Adamson to be faithful to the text and introduce a little danger. But no, he cut the character. There's obviously no room for such moral ambiguity in this film. Instead, we are forced to endure an entirely cuddly Aslan and a souped-up Prince Caspian. The boy is indeed pretty. Pretty vacant, like the expensive, jampacked film over which he presides.
DEREK MALCOLM IS AWAY
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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