The Chronicles of Money-a: Jesus, Lilith and the drobe full of War

Rating: 5/10 (15 December 2005)

It isn't so much what the Narnia says that is disturbing as the things that it is really saying and how that bodes for sequels and other popular entertainments.
One of the first lessons learned by one of the Pevensie children is that it's okay to go home with strangers. Especially if they offer you tea. If they offer you tea then you are just ill-mannered if you don't come home with them. Mr. Tumnus has been cast much younger than in the book, and the film is chock full of very weird close up shots of peoples' faces as they change expression. This combined with the borderline coquettish way the little girl playing Lucy has been directed to act, the lulling of her to sleep and the anguished "I'm kidnapping you," made this scene more harrowing than anything in the recent crazy-guy-with-child-in-peril film "Keane." Is it really possible that people don't see how freaking creepy this sequence is? Another lesson: if you have an imagination you are a sissy boy-liar-traitor and probably have dark hair. You will betray your own family to their deaths.
Another lesson: Women should shut the heck up when a man (especially one with blonde hair and blue eyes) is making a decision. They keep telling Susan not to be so smart and she keeps shrewing it up with the wrong decisions, countermanding and undermining her man/brother (did I mention that's creepy too) at the worst possible times with the worst possible decisions. When will she ever learn? As I hear there is more punishment in store for women who think they want to have ideas, or be unashamed of their strength and (gasp) sexuality. Stay tuned! And if you are a strong woman, then you are heartless, asexual andwell, ultimate evil really. Why not end it all now and save Aslan the trouble of biting your head off? Thank any lion god that in movies it doesn't matter how cool you make the good guys: evil is always cooler. Tilda Swinton walks away with it to the point where there should soon be an epidemic of cross-dressing elementary school boys trying to be as tough as she is.
Another lesson: Christmas is all about presents and has bugger-all to do with Christ. As a moonbat I can't really argue with this lesson.
Know ye this: Lion Christ was shaved for our sins. Yea, upon his haunches he sat, taunted by Jew and Orc alike. Verily would he have been smote and struck from the book of life by the evil Smart Woman, save that Lion Christ knew the secret to tricking her: women can't read! Huzzah! With this gnosis he laid his fuzzy head upon the pagan altar bearing the very instructions of how he would rise again on the morrow. O for a muse of fur!
'Tis a rare film where the talking beavers are more realistic than the humans. Oh, and the new age music is simply awful.
Is this really what you want your children to be learning?