If you believe that movies began somewhere in the late 1990s with the Star Wars prequels and that visual effects are a signifier of quality, then this is one classic five-star week of blockbusting excellence. If, on the other hand, you’ve ever identified with a character, been moved by a narrative, or been provoked into thoughtfulness by a film, then you’re in for a bumpy ride.

A trio of high-profile Hollywood mega-movies kicks off with The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Part two in a proposed series of – gulp – seven C. S. Lewis adaptations, this one begins with the strangely stiff Pevensie children being whisked through a magical London Tube tunnel and back to the land of talking rodents and messianic warmongering lions.

Here, however, 1,300 years have passed since the last Pevensie adventure and Narnia is now controlled by a race of jackbooted fascists called Telemarines. Thus it’s up to the Pevensies, together with the Telemarine defector and titular hero Caspian (Ben Barnes), to organise an army of woodland creatures (including Eddie Izzard’s swashbuckling field mouse), under the leadership of the returning New Testament bully Aslan (Liam Neeson), to face the enemy in two extremely lengthy and proudly frenetic effects-filled battles.

The film-makers, perhaps reacting to the sickly sweetness of the first movie, have promised a darker experience this time. And true, a lot of the film takes place at night. Elsewhere the eldest Pevensie, Peter (William Moseley) has been given an indie-kid fringe and a disgruntled scowl, but he still can’t act, while the charismatic newcomer Barnes as the vaguely Hispanic Caspian gets to hiss: “Deed you keel my fathair?”, but is otherwise underused.

Finally, Aslan is not the battling Jesus he was in the first movie, though he remains infuriatingly sanctimonious. This time, instead of suffering the wounds of Christ, he merely roars at the sky, conjuring up computer-generated set pieces whenever the Pevensies are in danger. Which isn’t very dramatically satisfying. But it looks nice.

PG, 144 minutes

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