Director: Andrew Adamson

Watching Hollywood remakes of one’s childhood classics is a bit like watching a slow-motion car crash – you can’t tear your eyes away even at the bloody end. And like the Harry Potter franchise, the Chronicles of Narnia movies seem to be getting off to a rocky start. Both share some seriously dodgy CGI and a cast of awkward child actors, though the former excels at sticking to the books while the Narnia films do not. Prince Caspian, in particular, deviated from the original plot considerably. And considering how long it was (about 2½ hours), scriptwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely could’ve at least stayed faithful to CS Lewis instead of fluffing it up for the big screen.

Writers created tension between the eldest of the four Pevensie children, Peter (William Moseley) and Prince Caspian (played by British actor Ben Barnes, sporting a ridiculous quasi-Spanish accent) on a whim, and a scene with the White Witch was thrown in for no apparent reason. Also irksome: all the Telmarine characters were portrayed by Italian and Spanish actors, reinforcing fairy-tale stereotypes about dark-haired, olive-skinned villains. Among the few bright spots in the film were Skandar Keynes as Pevensie sibling No 3 Edmund and Peter Dinklage as the red dwarf Trumpkin.

At the end of the day, Prince Caspian is part of a children’s series addressing mature topics (in this film in particular, genocide, rebirth, assimilation, war and religion) in a fantasyland. But where Harry Potter films succeed – treating death realistically, but without losing its core audience of kids – the Narnia series ends up as cartoonish mockery of the themes and original text. CS Lewis simply does not translate well into snappy one-liners and adolescent flirting. Please, give the audience some credit. Why ruin a good thing?