Review by Paul Cote

Rating: **

I’m going to start by confessing that I actually do have a partial soft spot for Gregson-Williams’ earlier score The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. No, I wasn’t big on the dated new age/world music passages, and no, I couldn’t stand the obnoxious and relentless Media Ventures-infected action cues, but once I got over the derivative pop-simplicity of the material, the score did have some charmingly lyrical moments and handful of moving themes. Moreover, I had the pleasure to hear Gregson-Williams conduct a suite from the film in concert last year, and I was actually quite stunned at how much the music opened up in a live setting. I don’t know if he re-orchestrated everything for a live ensemble or if the original album was just hideously mixed, but hearing “Only the Beginning of an Adventure” played by such a huge and expressive group of performers almost had me convinced that Gregson-Williams had created a modern fantasy classic. I tell you all of this because I want to make it clear that I actually was favorably disposed to the idea of another Gregson-Williams-scored Narnia film. I feel guilty about it, but I do kinda like the old themes and wouldn’t have minded hearing him expand on them. No such luck, sadly; even by the modest guilty-pleasure standards of the first score, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian falls flat. With little magic or wonder to latch onto, Gregson-Williams leaves us with an enormously dour and heavy-handed clunker, one with very little fun to make up for its lack of substance.

Harry Gregson-Williams

I’m told that Caspian is a much more heavy-handed film than its predecessor, which might explain why there’s so little magic to go around with the score. Where the first score had a healthy portion of childish wonder to balance out the seriousness, Caspian is about 75% solemn action music. Now as I mentioned earlier (a whole paragraph ago even - remember way back then, when you were reading that first paragraph? Ah, how much we’ve changed since then, how much we’ve grown, you and I.), I’ve come around to a few things in Gregson-Williams’ Narnia approach, but his hollow action music is not one of those things. Much like Zimmer’s attempts at solemn music, it’s all far too simplistic and derivative for me to appreciate as serious music, and it doesn’t offer me any of the guilty pleasures that would let me overlook its complete lack of substance and enjoy it anyway. Cues like “Sorcery and Sudden Vengeance” and “The Duel” just drag on and on, and any of those things that might spark your interest - an unexpected rhythm here, an unpredictable modulation there, or a memorable melody there - are entirely absent. For a few moments, I might be able to grit my teeth and bear through it, but after the first few cues, the score almost plays as one sustained album-long, pop-melodramatic action cue. And it’s pretty gosh-darned hard to sit through.

I’ll be fair though - there are a few moments that draw on what I liked from the first score and hint at what Prince Caspian might have been. In “The Kings and Queens of Old,” the composer returns to his wardrobe and Narnia themes, delicately pushing the melodies in subtle new directions without straying from their initial sense of wonder. And “Arrival at Aslan’s How” gives us a satisfying full reprisal of the anthemic Aslan theme (you know, the one that sounds like the themes from Deep Blue Sea and The Thirteenth Warrior had a baby). Extraordinarily derivative as the theme may be, it does have a way of making your heart swell despite itself, and its presence here is welcome. But after that cue, the score is a largely joyless affair. I can’t go so far as to say that the themes disappear altogether throughout the rest of the score, because they don’t. Gregson-Williams uses them liberally throughout the rest of the score, but he uses them by sending the themes through somber runs through the dour action music, robbing the melodies of any simple pleasures they may once have carried in the process. By the time the composer reaches the umpteenth “dark” rendition of the Aslan theme in “Return of the Lion,” you’ll just wish he’d left well enough alone. Even his new theme for Prince Caspian (it first appears midway through “Prince Caspian Flees”) might have had some simple potential, but the we don’t get to hear it outside of the action fray until the very last cue when it’s largely too late to care.

But if I’m being overwhelmingly negative, let me qualify and say that there are no doubt many who will absolutely lap this sort of music up. If you did like the action music from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t be happy to have a whole album full of it. For me, however, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian leaves me emotionally and intellectually bored out of my skull. Gregson-Williams sometimes demonstrates a great deal of talent as a composer, but not here - here he writes the joyless and insubstantial stuff that causes so many listeners to lose heart in contemporary film music.

Music Composed and Conducted by Harry Gregson-Williams; Orchestrations by Ladd Macintosh, Geoff Stradling, Jennifer Hammond, Larry Rench; Label: Walt Disney Records, (D000074202); Availability: In-print; U.S. Release Date: May 13, 2008.

01. Prince Caspian Flees (4:34)
02. The Kings and Queens of Old (3:33)
03. Journey to the How (4:45)
04. Arrival at Aslan’s How (2:57)
05. Raid on the Castle (7:05)
06. Miraz Crowned (4:47)
07. Sorcery and Sudden Vengeance (6:16)
08. The Duel (5:56)
09. The Armies Assemble (2:22)
10. Battle at Aslan’s How (5:17)
11. Return of the Lion (4:16)
12. The Door in the Air (7:52)
13. The Call (3:08)
Performed by Regina Spektor
14. A Dance Round the Memory Tree (3:42)
Performed by Oren Lavie
15. This Is Home (4:01)
Performed by Switchfoot
16. Lucy (4:33)
Performed by Hanne Hukkelberg

Total Playing Time: 75:04