Great visual adventure, but somewhat flat

Rating: 7/10 (9 December 2005)

I have read all of the Narnia books, and being a film student in college, I was eagerly anticipating this movie, and went to the opening show. After leaving the theater at 2:30 in the morning, I felt it difficult to describe how I felt about the film. As a visual epic, it is beautiful, and well done. The land of Narnia is beautifully brought to life, and the art direction, props, creatures, costumes, are all equally spectacular. It is a very broad and epic movie, with all sorts of different creatures and monsters for the audience to stare in fascination at. So visually, well done, I have very few complaints. But the story, the actual film as a whole felt lacking to me. As I said I have read the books, and I was impressed that very little was changed at all, in fact I had a hard time remembering anything. Nearly everything important was preserved from the book, with little to no alteration. Yet in the end, I didn't feel the story, it didn't emotionally move me. The acting was good, yet flat and predictable much of the time. In fact because so much of the story was preserved, I felt like it was just a copy of the books. And while that is good, especially to 'purists' of the book, film is a different medium from literature, and thus the style has to change somewhat in order to evoke what the books do. But I don't hate the film, I thought it was quite good, I loved the books, and I like this film as well. It just didn't have the depth and emotional truth of the books. See this movie, it is good, I will again, because I imagine many people will have a different reaction.