...pretty good film....

Rating: 9/10 (7 January 2006)

Chronicles of Narnia is pretty good film. It does seems to loosen up a bit in the second act, but overall the tale and its execution does manage, at times, to amaze. All the kids played their parts well, and I especially liked the performance that James McAvoy gave as the faun; one can tell that he is an exceptional stage actor immediately.
The only other faults that I found with the film were that the editing could have been more generous at times, holding on a shot or two for an extra beat here and there to further the effect of the image and the pacing. And the backgrounds, especially toward the end of the film, all have strange saturation with odd artificial hues. I don't know if this is usually done with the theory of making it more appealing to kids, but my eyes didn't like it. They were either over saturated with the wrong values, or were the wrong mixtures of reds, blues and greens.
In light of excellence, one has to consider a few other things. Like why didn't the battle climax scene, which was pretty good, elevate the film to the level of true spectacle? And as another reviewer wrote, as soon as the prophesy of the destiny of the children becomes known, they loose any sense of self-determination and events happen to them not because of them. There are answers to these questions, but perhaps they demand a larger forum than a capsule review. Suffice is to say, I think, that the film holds together despite these imperfections, and, as a third reviewer wrote, "Bring on Prince Caspian."