Chronicles of Narnia-Prince Caspian/The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1989)

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General		Extras
Category	Family	Menu Animation & Audio Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	1989
Running Time	170:20
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Alex Kirby
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Richard Dempsey Jonathan R. Scott Sophie Cook Sophie Wilcox David Thwaites Samuel West Warwick Davis Jean Marc Perret John Hallam Robert Lang Angela Barlow Guy Fithen Neale McGrath
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Geoffrey Burgon Stephen Newnham Sarah Greenwood

    As dangerous as nostalgia often is I will risk the employment of it in writing this review. As a six or seven year old I remember my parents buying me the complete set of Narnia stories written by that doyen of fantasy literature and friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis. I very quickly became hooked on these wonderful stories of an enchanted world, reachable only by a select few, through wardrobes and old paintings, governed by mystical creatures like the great lion Aslan. When in the early nineties the ABC began airing the BBC's then new television productions of some of Lewis' Narnia stories I remember racing home from school to watch the half hour episodes, hanging on every word of these well-spoken children and fantastical beings - centaurs, dwarves, wizards, agonizing as they ended on cliff hangers and telling myself that I didn't really know what happened in spite of the fact I'd read them repeatedly. Now, years later I returned to watch them, now released on DVD, and found that much of the magic has indeed faded and my eyes are now somewhat more critical of the nonetheless well intentioned British productions.

    We turn to the two stories on this title, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which follow on from probably the most popular and well known of the Narnia fables - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which introduced us to the four children - Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. Prince Caspian is told in two parts, whilst four episodes are devoted to the story of the Dawn Treader.

Episode One: Whilst waiting at the train station, the four Pevensie children are whisked away to Narnia to help the young prince Caspian. He has been lied to all his life by his evil uncle King Miraz and is actually the rightful heir to the throne of Narnia.

Episode Two: The Pevensies: Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, once the High Kings and Queens of Narnia, help the embattled Prince Caspian to reclaim the throne and defeat the forces of Miraz and once again call upon Aslan to help them.

Episode Three: Caspian, now a young adult, sets out on an adventure to rescue the seven Councillors banished for supporting his father when he was King. Edmund and Lucy are once again called to Narnia to help him. Unfortunately their pompous little brat of a cousin Eustace is sucked into the world with them.

Episode Four to Six: After a storm at sea, the voyagers land on an enchanted island where Eustace, because of his greed and selfishness, is turned into a   dragon. From this point on Eustace becomes somewhat more bearable, and apologises to the crew for being such a brat. The journeys continue to enchanted islands with ponds that turn everything to gold, strange round creatures with large feet that remind one of Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, a large toothed sea monster, opportunistic slave traders and finally, the edge of the world where Reepicheep the valiant mouse hops into his coracle and paddles into the unknown of the End of the World.

    These are enchanting stories to read and young children will no doubt find the TV realisations a pleasant diversion. However, now that we've had the gargantuan movie fantasy The Lord of the Rings embed itself in our consciousness and the lesser but still impressive Harry Potter films for a younger audience, you may find, as I did, that for all the charm of the stories, visually they just cannot compete with what we can find in the cinema complexes and video stores. Let's hope that the film version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe currently in production will keep the pleasant dignity and fantasy of this BBC series but improve on the 2D animation and two person operated puppet otherwise known as Aslan.

Video

    Turning to visual rather than storytelling appraisal renders a far less flattering result. In short, these transfers are below par, even taking into account budget and the age of the material (a late 80s television production). It is surprising that the BBC, proud of their efforts when these productions were released to air, should have released these titles with less than appropriate care given to the video transfers. They are presented in their correct, original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 full frame and not 16x9 enhanced.

    It is worth pointing out that colours are well done - there is little in the way of colour bleeding or oversaturation, although on occasion reds were a little too garishly presented. Skin tones were well rendered once you realise everyone has paler skin in the 'mother country'. Film artefacts are fairly minimal and kept under control throughout. Problems arise elsewhere.

    Sharpness isn't flash, although nothing is too indistinct. There are unfortunately in Prince Caspian frequent incidences of ghosting, haziness and light drag, all of which could be forgiven if this was some sort of retro sci-fi movie (I half wondered whether Richard Kelly, director of Donnie Darko, saw this DVD before coming up with the trailing effects in his film).

    Blacks don't look black enough, and are often a little blue or green. Night time scenes are plagued by a little too much grain and low level noise for my liking. Pixilation is a fairly innocuous but notable problem in the final episode on the disc.

    In a word, or few, a little disappointing, but having said that, kids are not going to mind so much, and they are after all the target audience. Just make sure they haven't seen Harry Potter too recently.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio is equally unremarkable, but is less marred by flaws.

    We get a solitary English Dolby Stereo 2.0 track that is both clear (perhaps too clear - we hear some pretty amateurish sounding staging sound effects) and easy to understand. Audio sync is not perfect, and a number of times in the fourth episode there is dialogue that seems to have been inserted after shooting, and not too carefully either.

    There are a few cracks and pops but nothing that makes the track difficult to listen to.

    The music is fairly repetitive but I remain enchanted by the series' sparkling opening theme, which has the right mix of romanticism and an English pastoral lilt that would make Ralph Vaughan Williams happy.

    The surround channels get little to do, but if you play around with your speaker system you might be able to add some ambience to your experience. The subwoofer is equally neglected, but considering these productions were filmed more like outdoor plays than films, one was probably asking for too much by expecting a blockbuster audio transfer.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    We are presented with a small gallery of about twenty photos that is fairly uninspiring.

    Reviews of the Region 1 releases sing the praises of the video transfer which, considering what we have, seems to suggest theirs would be the better buy, as everything else is identical. However, it would be more cost effective to buy the Region 4 release, and remember PAL transfers have inherent advantages over NTSC. Your decision, although I'd probably stick with the Region 4.

    Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader were commendable adaptations of C.S. Lewis' classic stories in their time but now I feel they are but minnows in the dark seas created by the likes of Peter Jackson and Chris Columbus. Thanks for the trip down memory lane though.

    The audio and video transfers are adequate but could have been better, much better.

    The complete (well almost) lack of extras is expected but still disappointing.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall