Review: TCoN: Prince Caspian

I have explained my take on this film to several friends now so I think I have the best way to explain it rehearsed out pretty well. Here’s the deal. Whenever anybody attempts movies like the Chronicles of Narnia they are expected to bring a few things to the table. For one thing they are taking on a series of books that are classics in the minds of half of the civilized world, specifically the US and Europe. Therefore they have the responsibility of doing their best to live up to the expectations of all of those already established fans to display the stories that they already know and love in a fashionable and consistent with the original story in mind fashion. Second, The Chronicles of Narnia are fantasy epic novels that deal with a lot of mythical creatures, huge battle scenes and powerful storytelling themes. You want to make a movie that deals with that it is going to be stacked up against all other movies that included those elements and compare it with them to see if it accomplished what they did or not. Unfortunately I think Prince Caspian failed miserably with both of those challenges.

The whole thing seemed like a very obvious half ass attempt to make the film family friendly but still have crazy battle scenes but still be emotionally evocative. The characters throughout the whole thing were like watered down versions of their literary counterparts and the battle sequences were laughable. The whole movie really just strung you along until the end where it dropped you off clumsily and pleaded for you to come back to the next installation in the series. I was very disappointed and will probably only see the next book’s movie to just see how bad this series can get. I give it a C+/D- and that is probably just because Warwick Davis, the OG Ewok, was in it and I also liked Eddie Izzard playing Reepicheep.

Review: Lars & The Real Girl

Anybody else remember Ryan Gosling in “Remember The Titans” as the hick kid who dances to “Act Naturally” in his football camp dormitory? Or when he took the leading role in the short lived TV series “Young Hercules”? If you do you have to admit that this guy has climbed up from a cataclysmic career and has given several performances in some of his later movie roles to prove his worth. Lars & The Real Girl was another example.

The interesting thing about this movie is that from the previews you might think that the director was going to go the cheap laughs route and do stupid humor jokes throughout the whole story about a man dating a lifesize sex doll like a Farley Brothers flick. In actuality the movie was very classy and delved more into the psyche of a disturbed young man with an unhealthy past. Ryan Gosling plays Lars, a man who grew up in a fractured home where his mother died at his birth which caused his father to live the rest of his life with a depressed broken heart and his much older brother to leave the house as soon as he had the means and leave Lars to live with a very sad dad.

The movie has a library of great characters and the story is spotless. It also wrapped it up a very creative and solid resolution that left you happy with the story as a whole. Its a good one in my book and gets an A-/B+ in my book.