Stalking Venus

When I was a small child, there was a relatively small handful of author’s names that I knew: Roald Dahl, Alfred Hitchcock, Enid Blyton, A.A. Milne, and of course, C.S. Lewis.

I didn’t read all of the Narnia books, because frankly even at age seven, I found them to be a bit preachy. I was reading Dahl short stories like ‘Bitch’ and ‘The Great Switcheroo’ probably long before I was supposed to, so the bland parables of Lewis left me a bit cold.

Still, I was quite excited when the first Chronicles of Narnia film came out, and I wasn’t too disappointed by it. As far as storyline goes, I wasn’t expecting Lord of the Rings or even Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was expecting an accurate translation of the book to film: i.e. bland and parabolist, albeit with stunning photography, sets and effects. Q.E.D.

Last week I went to watch Chronicles 2 – Prince Caspian. With a somewhat different result.

The following review may contain spoilers. Consider yourself warned…

I’ve made myself wait  a while before writing this review, because I thought it would be best to chill out a bit before letting GenPop have my view… However, a full week later, I still feel the same way about this film and so, with traditional Stalking Venus honesty, I’m going to kick its awful dead carcass around the small screen for a while. Please bear with me.

I went into the movie without much expectation other than that it would be grand and visually pleasing. I was pleasantly surprised to be blown away by the opener. The kids are all in a train station which crumbles away and becomes Narnia. The effects are really excellent and the sense of excitement brought by the scene had me grinning and thinking “way cool!”.

The rest of the movie however, was like a slowly executed but carefully planned power slide into mundanity, starting with this guy —>

Ben Barnes is a relatively unknown British actor with a bit-part in Neil Gaiman’s epic fairytale Stardust. Sadly, in this film he has a starring role as the eponymic character, Caspian. (Out of interest, ‘Caspian’ is Caspian in the same way that ‘McGuyver’ is McGuyver – no first/last name).

I spent the better part of the film wanting to smash this guy in the face. His whiny, sulky good looks may be appealing to a pre-pubescent girl, but it’ll irritate the crap out of everyone else. The producers obviously told the casting agent to “find an Orlando Bloom Legolas type of character”. A good idea in principle, but only if you have the dialogue and direction to match. Barnes is to Bloom, as Pesci is to De Niro.

The Pevensie kids (Ancient Kings and Queens of Narnia) were pretty much as I remembered them from the first film. The acting was carried by the two girls – Georgie Henley and Anna Popplewell – and could have bloomed into something worthwhile with better direction from Andrew Adamson. The character of Edmund, played by Skandar Keynes wasn’t bad at all, and I think if he’s clever, we may end up seeing some good indie-style movies from him. I can easily see him in a role like Donnie Darko.

But what really made this movie fall flat, was that it has no humanity. It’s as if the script was put together by a team of technical experts. The story becomes a blunt way to link grand scenes, rather than integral to the movie experience. The characters are dragged from set piece to set piece with the most incredible and vast backdrops and scenery, but somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to care about them at all.

The final nail in the coffin is the blunt, totally unsubtle religious bludgeoning the audience has to put up with in the latter half of the film. In both the books and the first Chronicles film, the religious references were visible but subtle, which is part of what made Lewis’ works so popular with both adults and children.

However, when that subtlety is reduced to a watery avatar of the Turin Shroud leaping up out of the river and smashing the bad guys like a kid having a tantrum and finishing off by having God eat the main bad guy, it was all I could do to stay seated instead of walking out in disgust.

The one redeeming feature, as small (ahem) as it may be, is the mouse Reepicheep, played by British comedian Eddie Izzard. Director Andrew Adamson is so obviously most comfortable with animated characters and Reepicheep further goes to show that perhaps the director should stick with directing the pixel magicians. Having directed Shrek 2, he has literally lifted Antonio Banderas’ Puss character, stuck it in a mouse body and given this cow’s ear of a movie it’s tiny vestige of humanity.

Verdict: It’s utter crap.

Go see the movie for the mouse or the castle, but otherwise give it a skip.