If you liked the first Harry Potter, you'll love this

Rating: 9/10 (9 December 2005)

I read the Narnia books as a kid, and my imagination took flights of fancy that I would have loved to have seen on celluloid back then. Now I'm an adult and the technology has finally arrived. The various mythical creatures are brought to life spectacularly, the scenery is fantastic, there's some understated humour, and the final battle scene is a worthy successor to the Minas Tirith battle in Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Indeed, this film both gains and loses by following LOTR. It gains because LOTR makes some of the mythical creatures in this film more believable. If you thought orcs, elves and hobbits were strange, wait till you see the magnificently rendered centaurs. But it loses some of its impact in the battle scenes because of its similarity to the LOTR battles ... though, in fairness, most mediaeval battles were pretty much like that, so it's hard to get much variation in.
As for the Harry Potter connection, the stars of the film are all kids -- except for the White Witch, played with commendable iciness by Tilda Swinton -- with the youngest child (Lucy Pevensie/Georgie Henley) likely to take home the most plaudits. Also, if this film has a weakness, it's that (like HP & the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone), it stays a bit too close to the book from which it was derived. Don't get me wrong, the book is an excellent, heroic story -- but it's a children's book, and some of the 'this happened and then that happened' moments stretched credibility for me as an adult. Oh, and one or two shots were a bit obviously greenscreened with the characters superimposed on backgrounds.
N.B. Much has been made of the Christian analogy in the story -- it's there, of course, but it isn't overplayed.
In short, if you can see it through a child's eyes, or if you haven't seen Lord of the Rings, this is a must see. If you have ... well, it won't seem quite the franchise monster that LOTR was, but it's worth the night out just for the technical effects on the creatures, and the rest of it is pretty good as well.