Important film from an important book

Rating: 7/10 (3 February 2012)

Adapting a book that so many audience members have read and cherish is surely a daunting task, but I believe it is also a great responsibility. Recently, Peter Jackson set the bar pretty high in this regard with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Unfortunately, Adamson's "Narnia" wasn't quite up to snuff.
I count myself among those who cherish "The Chronicles of Narnia," having read them as a child and having re-read "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" in eager anticipation of the film. In my opinion, this film adaptation not only falls short, but does a disservice to the audience by cheating us of much of the impact and wonder of the original books.
Here are the general categories (including some specific examples) where I felt the film didn't deliver: Screen Adaptation - Some important scenes that illustrated character dynamic were cut short making later behavior and motivation seem exaggerated or cliché. Example: The scene where Edmund meets Jadis was rushed and awkward. (It wasn't even demonstrated that the Turkish Delight was enchanted in order to manipulate Edmund - we were left to assume that his allegiance to Jadis was due solely to avarice!) Also, in the book, the mere mention of the name "Aslan" for the first time was an event that had an important impact on the children. In the movie this impact was all but lost, as these subtler points were sacrificed to save screen time for the type of gruesome battle scenes that you would expect from a "fantasy" movie but in this case didn't serve to advance the story. Another pulled punch: in the book, the scene with Father Christmas was a brilliant omen of the turning of the tides but here the scene seemed out of place and just downright weird. (They might as well have run into the Easter Bunny.)