“Prince Caspian” – The Chronicles of Novocain.

Have you ever watched a movie right after going to the dentist for a deep cleaning? Well, now I have. It was a very interesting experience, as I had to have the left side of my face shot with Novocain. I spent half of the movie distracted by the feeling that my lips were swollen to four times its normal size, even thought they weren’t. It was actually just as entertaining as the movie. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was pretty entertaining. It was just the first time I’d ever had Novocain.

There’s not a whole lot to say about this film. It was no better or worse than “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” The main characters were played by the same actors, the producers were all the same, and the special effects delivered the same visuals we saw from the first film. I even re-read the book, as I hadn’t read it in a long time, since I remembered it as being kind of boring. The writers did a very good job of sticking to the story, with only very minor changes, though it wasn’t as boring as I remembered it as a kid. The writers did add a couple of scenes to spice up the story, even though they didn’t really add anything to the story. All they did was make the movie last two and a half hours instead of two hours and found a way to squish Tilda Swinton (the White Witch) into the film.

There were a couple things that kept this movie from being very good. While the writers did stick to the story extremely well, they failed to improve the dialogue. They even kept some of the dialogue from the book, which turned out to be the worst part of the movie. Most of those lines came out as uncomfortable at best and garbage at worst. I guess they forgot that this story was written over fifty years ago and that its dialogue doesn’t translate very well. Unfortunately, none of the actors were good enough to pull off any of these lines. I know that they’re mostly kids, but even Sergio Castellitto (Lord Miraz) could use some acting lessons.

They also failed miserably with the trees joining the battle. In the book, the trees are described as practically human-looking and that the entire forest joined the battle. Picture something a lot like the Ents from the “Lord of the Rings” films. In “Prince Caspian,” the trees just look like big trees and there are less than ten of them. Huh? Was anybody convinced by this? Did the artists just give up? I don’t understand why they would mail in the climactic scene of the movie in such an obviously lazy display. Luckily, this was only a minor annoyance, so I’ll leave it at that.

Like I said, the movie was entertaining and was on the same level as the previous film. Although, I may have just been enjoying how the left side of my face did not feel attached to the right side of my face.

Rating: Ask for four dollars back, or in my case, a lot of napkins.