SOURCE.

I think a more truthful subtitle might have been, Jesus Fuck, Will Aslan Just Show Up Already? The absence of the lion king from much of the plot's machinations (spoiler: he spends most of the tale hiding offscreen in the forest like a ... well, like a huge pussy) is a buzzkill, and establishes this second entry in the wannabe-epic Narnia franchise as the "war movie" of the bunch—deliberately devoid of the earlier film's sporadic enchantments, offering day-for-night palace intrigue in their stead. It's worth noting that the sequel retains its predecessor's general ABC Family hokiness, so that aforesaid sequences of faux-dark plotting and scheming frequently register as a Golan-Globus gloss on Shekhar Kapur's Elizabethan England. That's the other thing about Caspian: it inexplicably looks cheaper than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The computer-generated flora and fauna are blurrier, the battlements rubberier, the acting more wooden. Well, that last quibble isn't really a technical shortcoming, although it's difficult to apply the word "artistic" to Ben Barnes' performance as the titular liege, even when describing its utter failure thereof. The actor's limited emotional range and hammy pan-European accent make it unclear whether he's dueling to reclaim his throne or merely auditioning to be Paris Hilton's next fiancé. Even a tantalizing non-canonical appearance by Tilda Swinton's White Witch fails to enliven the proceedings. The plain fact of this installment is that the marginal source material has been so overburdened by the demands of summer blockbuster warfare that the story's human elements, and indeed the likable young quartet at its center, become completely lost amidst the listless, relentless and interchangeable scenes of pixelated battle. Next time, less action, more acting please. Grade: C+