The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Moving Score With Depth and Feeling (2008-12-28) Rating: 5/5
I'm floored that anyone could give this soundtrack less than five stars (four at the least). It positively overflows with elegance, emotion, and movement. It is darker than the first soundtrack, but this sets it apart from its predecessor and plunges the listener deeper into the troubled but beautiful world of Narnia. Harry Gregson-Williams does wonders incorporating new music with the already established Narnia themes and at times the music is so moving it pierces through you with poignancy and depth that many composers struggle to achieve. The ending pieces revive the sometimes (appropriately) heavier tonality of the score with a light, positive, hopeful and somewhat bittersweet mood that always leaves me satisfied, never depressed. Both Narnia soundtracks are among my favorites in my extensive soundtrack collection and every time I listen to them, I enjoy them just as much as the time before.
Deaf Monkies in the Dark (2008-12-27) Rating: 1/5
Who's making these marketing decisions at the Magic Kingdom, deaf monkies in the dark?

Aside from John William's original Star Wars orchestral scores, how often do people buy albums JUST for the background music (which is what a good film score does; if you find yourself noticing the score more than you're paying attention to the plot/dialogue/action, then the movie is either lame or the sound engineering was done drunken interns).

Forcing us to buy 12 pieces of instrumental music just to get to the ballads/anthems/etc that we REALLY want is just plain dumb. It also denies artists like Regina Spektor and Switchfoot (et al) cash in the form of royalties never paid because of songs never bought.

I'm not knocking Gregson-Williams, his heroic, Romantic score does the job of the Heroic Fantasy we watched. But without it's cinematic context, it's just so many bits and pieces.

I first checked for the Spektor/Switchfoot songs on iTunes and got hit with the "Album Only" non-sense. I wasn't surprised, iTunes does this sort of thing all the time. Amazon, typically doesn't. Hence Disney's clearly the one at fault here, dictating the terms.

How about a little corporate courage? Disney needs the Amazon outlet (portal?) much more than Amazon needs Disney soundtrack CDs. Use your customer base to get us what we want how we want it.

A VERY disatisfied TEN year Amazon customer!!!! (And 38 yr Disney customer!)
Very disappointed (2008-11-30) Rating: 2/5
I borrowed this cd from the library to make sure I wanted to buy it, and I was very disappointed. The songs on this cd are almost cloned from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the new ones aren't any good. Harry Gregson-Williams did a wonderful job on the first one, but it seems he couldn't create anything new. I gave it two stars because the songs are good, but nothing new. I would recommend buying the first one instead of this one.
Narnia as expected (2008-10-27) Rating: 4/5
I purchased the cd strictly for the tracks "The Call" by Regina Spektor and "This is Home" by Switchfoot. These are surprisingly my favorite tracks.
I wasn't very impressed by the other songs that had lyrics, but the "soundtracks" are good. Kind of reminds me of some of the songs from Pirates (without that theme of course).
Overall didn't disappoint in a soundtrack sort of sense.
Disappointed (2008-08-27) Rating: 3/5
I was a great fan of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe score, so was very much looking forward to this release. Unfortunately, i'm pretty disappointed.
One of the reasons I enjoyed the original score so much was for it's calm, celtic-like melodies in the first half or so of the score. This score has a similar layout, but it focuses a lot more on the battle/action tracks, which i'm not particularly fond of.
I can completely understand why this is the case, as the film is a lot darker than the first and i've heard it contains a lot more action. This would be great if these tracks weren't so repetitive, sounding like the typical Media Ventures action cues we've heard so many times before. And even by the half way point these tracks start to drag, and the overall feel is that of hope for an original track some time soon.

However, perhaps for someone new to the genre and not having heard the first (a lot of the music on this CD sounds like rehashes of tracks from the first, which I guess is fair enough considering it is of course the same series of films) they would find a lot to enjoy here.
There still are some great tracks, the first 4 or so are a great listen. However, for me, after that is just gets repetitive and boring.

It also dosn't help having read before hand, this may or may not be true, that the composer - Harry Gregson-Williams was bored himself when composing the score. It definately shows.