Movie Reviews: Prince Caspian, Wanted & Kung Fu Panda

We’ve found ourselves at the cinema a lot lately so I thought I’d share my thoughts on the new releases we’ve seen.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Following on from the hugly sucessful adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian follows the adventures of the Pevensie children as they return to Narnia.

Set a year (in human terms) after Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy return from their first adventures, the Pevensies find themselves whisked from the Underground to a desolate and dangerous Narnia. The film’s timeline had to deviate from the original book, where they returned to Narnia much sooner, to account for the time-gap between making the films and explain the changes in the cast’s ages (particularly obvious in Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley.)

The film is as georgeous as it’s predecessor, the cast perform well and the pace is fairly tight. Notable stand-outs for me were Eddie Izzard as Reep-a-cheep (my favourite character from the book, excepting Aslan of course) and Warwick Davis as Nikabrik.

My only real criticism would be that the sense of peril wasn’t as strong as it feels in the book, which is probably down to the fact that films can never match your imagination, and it has to be geared to a younger audience.

All in all an entertaining couple of hours and a film I’ll definitely watch again.

Wanted

I was really looking forward to Wanted, sometimes I’m just in the mood for a bit of mindless action.

I ended up slightly dissapointed. The set pieces were huge and (for the most part) well done. James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angeline Jolie delivered excellent performances and the cameo from Terence Stamp was a highlight.

In the end though, it felt too much style over substance, the drive for visceral action seemed to subsume the plot and in the end it was fairly difficult to care what happened to any of the characters, despite the actors’ best efforts.

It’s one of those films I think you’ll either love or go ‘Meh’.

Kung Fu Panda

My first reaction on leaving the auditorium after Kung Fu Panda? “ZOMG Kung Fu Panda is teh Awesome!”

Visually stunning, well crafted plot and at time stomach-achingly funny.

I’m not usually a fan of Jack Black, but his voice talent brings Po to life and makes you care for the character. Dustin Hoffman is fantastic as Master Shifu, Ian McShane once again delivers a hiss-booable villain of quality and the supporting voice cast all play a part in making the film enjoyable.

Go see this, seriously. Forget seeing WallE, and go learn Kung Fu…Panda style.