A good movie, but a bad adaptation of a book.

Rating: 6/10 (12 April 2016)

This movie is the film adaptation of one of the most famous books of C.S. Lewis, who wrote a series of novels called "Chronicles of Narnia". In this film, four brothers enter a magical world of talking animals and find that their coming was prophesied and should defeat a terrible witch who enslaved the country in a long winter.
Directed by Andrew Adamson (who directed Shrek), has a script by Ann Peacock, Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. The cast was headed by Georgie Henley (Lucy), Skandar Keynes (Edmund), William Moseley (Peter), Anna Popplewell (Susan) and Tilda Swinton (The Witch), also relying on the voices of James McAvoy (Tumnus), Liam Neeson (Aslan) and Ray Winstone (Mr. Beaver). It won the Oscar for best characterization in 2006.
I've always been of the opinion that if we want to tell a story correctly, we must start at the beginning. That's not what this movie did. In fact, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", despite the fame, is not the book where the chronicle begins. The story begins before this events, in the novel "The Magician's Nephew". But okay, we have seen prequels before (Star Wars, for example). What I never saw was a successful film where the events are not properly explained to the public. Throughout the film, we understanding that we know very little about Narnia (like the four protagonists), but it might be good to know more, understand how that witch has earned its position and what happened in that world before the arrival of the four humans. This kind of mysteries didn't work in this kind of films, unless they are exploited in a very skillful way in the script, which was far from the reduced ability of the team that wrote it. I also believe that Lewis's book could have been better explored and understood. Apparently, the staff and the director were afraid to exploit the book and end up filling the film with Christian allegories (yes, he's full of it and this film also, even if it wasn't the intention). Despite these flaws, the film works well enough to delight the audience because we all have a little child inside us, and all children have dreamed of something like this. The special effects and characterization are irreproachable, the costumes too, and the scenery is straight out of a true fairy tale. This movie is all that "The Lord of the Rings" is not: it's a fairy tale, not a war epic in a strange world. For all this, it's a film that deserves to be seen often, although those who have particular taste in C.S. Lewis books might not like so much.