oh dearie me - Harry Potter and Aragorn have little to worry about

Rating: 3/10 (9 December 2005)

Pace: this movie was soooo slow to start with - the first hour dragged terribly, and degenerated into a predictable tennis match of terrible jeopardy and close shaves and narrow rescues and shouts of defiance.
Effects: some of the creature animation was not bad, but the integration of the real world with the studio stuff and the animated backgrounds and creatures was awful: including the cartoon-like German bombers at the beginning. Some of the shots of the kids in the Narnia landscapes looked like they were done at a cheap photographic studio in Yonkers. The makeup was often dodgy (the professor's facial hair, Mr Tumnus' nose, the witch's battle mascara at the final battle). Most annoyingly the real world production design (the professor's house, the interior of the ice palace, the snowy forest, the bits of dressed stone and wood, the Narnia interiors) looked sooooo fake, like an Olde Englishe theme bar. In fact, it looked like nothing had advanced in fantasy cineman since The Neverending Story!!!
Acting: the kids looked as if they could have been out-acted by princes William and Harry, apart from Edmund who was quite good. The faun was weird and should have been cast much older than the valiant McAvoy. Tilda Swinton was not nearly as menacing or sexy as she should have been (and she could have been), her combat and wand-waving/magic skills were garbage.
Music: generic fantasy type orchestral swells with no memorable themes a la LOTR, and some uneasily integrated modern stuff, with a forgettable pop song at the closing credits.