Hey ho. Another year, another screen adaptation of a classic children’s book. When Andrew Adamson’s lukewarm attempt at The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe reaped major bucks at the box office, a sequel was inevitable. Once again the Pevensie children, older and not quite as cute as last time, are called back to Narnia to sort out a few problems.

‘You may find Narnia a darker place than you remember,’ says a helpful dwarf, shortly before sticking a knife into a dying bear as if to ram home the point. And you know something, if I had a fiver for every time I’m told that the next instalment in a movie franchise is going to be ‘darker’ than its predecessor I’d have… well, around sixty five quid.

Since the Pevensies decamped, Narnia has been conquered by the Telmarines, who strangely all appear to be heavily accented Spaniards. Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), who comes across like a Majorcan tennis coach in armour, is the nephew of evil King Miraz (Sergio Castelitto) who wants him despatched as soon as possible, so his newborn baby boy might (eventually) ascend to the throne. Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy have been summoned to help Prince Caspian regain his kingdom and, being decent sorts, they decide to pitch in.

To be fair, this is a lot more successful than the first film. (I’d held out hopes of reviewing this simply with a title, Prince Crappy ’un but, unfortunately for me, this isn’t really so very bad). For one thing, the battle scenes are a good deal more convincing, the special effects budget has been ramped up a couple of notches, so you can’t spot the people wearing latex masks, and the story has the occasional interesting twist along the way.

But the climactic battle so wants to be Peter Jackson’s grandiose vision of the battle of Helm’s Deep, it's almost indecent. Adamson throws in cavalry charges, ranks of massed warriors doing that little steppy step march and Susan runs around firing off arrows in a Legolas style, but for all the energy expended, it doesn’t measure up to Lord Of The Rings, no matter how hard it tries.

For the younger viewers, there’s a cute mouse with a rapier (voiced by Eddie Izzard) a talking badger (voiced by Ken Stott) and a plethora of centaurs, who seem to be played mostly by Rastafarians. Tilda Swinton gets to reprise her wicked queen routine in a brief cameo that seems hardly worth the effort involved and of course, there’s an obligatory nod from Aslan, one of the more successful bits of CGI from the first movie.

Next up is Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, but I’d be lying if I said I was holding my breath for it.