From All Movie Guide: The makers of Prince Caspian -- the second installment in Walden Media's adaptation of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series -- faced a daunting challenge in bringing this one to the screen. Whereas the first and third books in the series (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, respectively) lend themselves effortlessly to filmization, the same cannot be said of Caspian, which Lewis structured with comparatively greater narrative complexity, a richer philosophical element, and less visual splendor than the preceding or successive installments. (It cannot be a coincidence that after the blockbuster success of Wardrobe, the producers initially skipped book two and announced the production of the visually rich and ripe Treader.)

On a rudimentary level, the ease of this tale, as it unfurls onscreen, functions as a barometer of the filmmakers' success in making Lewis' temporally fractured story digestible for contemporary audiences by streamlining it...

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