What is a Meta-Review?
Meta-reviews have been around the internet for some time now. Basically, a meta-review is a review that combines the opinions of three different publications or websites into one review. They provide a good way to synthesize the review opinions of several different sources, and cover more ground quickly.
Since Susan and I cannot possibly go see every movie, read every book, and play every game that comes out. Meta-reviews will a helpful tool to shape our opinions and inform us about new media.
Sample Meta-Review:
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian – PG
Common Sense Media (www.commonsensemedia.org)
Reviewed By: S. Jhoanna Robledo
PRINCE CASPIAN is lots of fun even if you’re not a fan of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. (In fact, it may be better not to be one in this case, as purists are likely to balk at some departures from the text.) Caspian doesn’t offer as much whimsy as the first installment, dealing instead with darker matters — notably that of Caspian’s fight to keep his throne, which is wrenched from him by his scheming, power-mad uncle. The Narnians, under siege by the Telmarines, are rougher around the edges this time, too; they’re more cynical and tired of persecution. To win their freedom, they must fight — often, and sometimes to their death.
Score: 3/5 Stars
Christianity Today (www.christianitytoday.com)
Review by Peter T. Chattaway
For all their talk of staying true to the spirit of C. S. Lewis’s novels, the makers of the Narnia films have frequently deviated from the books in ways both big and small, and the liberties they take with Prince Caspian—which echo but go far, far beyond the liberties they took with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—both help the film and hurt it. They help because you can sense that co-writer and director Andrew Adamson is finally making the big epic fantasy battle movie that he really wanted to make the first time around, and his devotion to that vision holds Prince Caspian together and makes it a more consistent, and consistently entertaining, sort of film than Wardrobe was. But in steering the film closer to his own vision, Adamson steers it away from Lewis’s, and so it loses some of the book’s core spiritual themes.
Score: 2 ½ /5 Stars
Conclusion: Prince Caspian is a darker more violent movie than LW&W with most of the strength of Lewis’ allegory stripped away. Still it is an entertaining and exciting movie with interesting and fun characters.
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