Well done efforts pay off, I hope the next one is better

Rating: 8/10 (12 December 2005)

Briefly, this is a good film, and a film that should do well with the audience and the box office. And, for more detailed reviews, please read the many others written by users here at IMDM.
Up front, I do recommend this movie, and I think it's well worth seeing, but it's not without its flaws.
And I think the flaws have to do with two things: Direction, and animation. The animation is of course superb, life changing, record setting, and all that, like so many reviewers are writing - but being truly critical, there are places here and there where it just doesn't work for me. Maybe I'm asking too much, and maybe if this film had been delayed a few years the problems for the animators would not have existed. To the point, in many scenes, just as I was relaxing into the scene, and really "suspending disbelief" and buying the scene, some character would move funny, and unnaturally, and that made the experience less than perfect - Sort of like trying to relax on a long drive, but every few hundred yards there's the unsettling feel and sound of another pothole, followed by easing back into relaxation until....wham ! another pothole. I started to look for flaws, which really isn't my nature, but it's what happened.
As for direction....for one, Andrew Adamson is a superb talent, but I have to report what I saw, and how I felt. And I'll do this by comparing the human acting in this film to that of Shadowlands, a film I admire greatly.
In Shadowlands, it all felt so real. Of course having Debra Winger and Tony Hopkins as centerpieces didn't hurt any. The Warnie character was superb as well. Compare that acting to some in this film - the Professor, the little ogre that was always around the white witch, Mrs. MacReady.....just a little overdone, I think, and unconvincing. Each time they were on the screen, I kept thinking their makeup etc. looked more like Little Theater than major Film. In Shadowlands, I felt drawn into the characters, and I especially admired the sensitivity, mannerisms, and believability of the Douglas Gresham character.
Funny enough, each of the four children characters in this film (Narnia) also, at times did this for me, especially the Lucy character, but in many cases when most or all of them were together, it just felt staged. And of course it was staged - this is film and they were acting. I just wish it hadn't been so obvious.
And I think all this added up to one feeling overall for me....the movie dragged rather than flowed in many parts, and that alone takes away from this being a top notch film in its own right. It will succeed with many people, and at the box office, and it was a very admirable job at bringing the book to film, but if this is to succeed as a franchise and live up to its potential, I think it needs to be viewed with the criticisms that I and several others have pointed out.