Saw Prince Caspian last night, largely on the strength of having liked The Lion, the WItch, and the Wardrobe, and the warm feelings of the book from my childhood. I can't say I was particularly impressed.
It was a faithful filming of the book, almost scene-by-scene. But scene-by-scene filimings seem to drain the movie of any tension. There's no sense of forward motion in the plot, no rhythmic create-and-release of dramatic tension in the events. The characters seem at the mercy of events, unable to actually effect change, and eventually reduced to waiting for Aslan to show up and help. I realize that this is the great lesson of the film - that we don't control events, and that faith is necessary for God to help up. But as useful as it may be for Apologetics for Children, that dynamic doesn't make for compelling movie-making.
There's also no real character development, with only Prince Caspian having a major moral decision towards the end of the film. The Pevensie children are already fully-formed from the first film, and only Peter and Susan are really engaging. The bad guys are stock characters, although patterning them after the early modern Spanish is inspired.
The great strength of the Lord of the Rings and the third Harry Potter film was that they were movies, not screen-captures of the books. Apparently, the Harry Potter franchise couldn't withstand the complaints from small children about missing this or that scene, and went back to treating the books as screenplays.
If they really are planning to film all seven Narnia books, I hope they find a way to break out of this trap.