Underwhelming

Rating: 4/10 (11 December 2005)

After the huge success of "The Lord of the Rings", studio money seems to flow rather easy for films of the fantasy genre. Money alone however does not make a good film, and "The Chronicles of Narnia" is a sad example for this.
In this movie, really nothing is as it should be. First, at over 40 minutes the exposition is way too long and provides little in terms of establishing characters: OK, Edmund is seemingly not that nice and Lucy willingly accompanies half-naked beings she meets in the forest to their home, but that's about it.
Secondly (and this is what hurts most): Narnia doesn't live, in fact, it looks like (and probably is) an indoor studio environment. The snow looks fake, except in very few scenes at the end there is absolutely no wind, the skin color of the characters doesn't look like it's cold and there is no icy breath to been seen. Actually, after getting bathed in a river that was frozen minutes ago, instead of shaking the characters look like they've just left a hot tub. Additionally, in the first 2/3 of the movie, we don't get to see anybody but characters with talking roles, which contributes to the feeling that there isn't a Narnia outside the main storyline we follow. All in all (and given a budget of 180 million USD) regarding atmosphere, this movie is a huge disappointment.
Thirdly, the story is much too simple (having never read the novel, I don't know if it's the screenplay's or Lewis' fault): 4 children enter a new world, which they are destined to save according to some prophecy, and there is an evil witch, who is, well, evil. That's about it. And at the end you can't even tell, what these children actually did to save Narnia and why they were needed. For reason unknown, they get crowned as kings and queens of Narnia anyway.
Furthermore, the movie does everything to prevent creating tension or being taken seriously, which comes down to three big mistakes:
1) Death is not final. Every character which gets frozen by the witch, can easily be defrosted later. Actually, getting defeated by the witch is nothing but a short cryostasis and no drama at all. And the only character that gets killed the conventional way, gets resurrected by some random magical mojo, which doesn't play a part before or after.
2) Violence is totally ungraphic. You actually wonder, if those Narnia creatures have any blood in their veins at all. The film doesn't even make the effort to switch to fast MTV style cutting to avoid showing explicit scenes (like Peter Jackson did to get the Lord of the Rings a PG-13 rating), they just refrain from showing blood, even if there would be tones of it.
3) Battle environments and choreography look like the big battle in Star Wars Episode I, and have the seriousness of an on-stage performance in Disney World. I mean, come on, the final battle takes place under a clear blue sky, surrounded by green hills, is being fought by colorful creatures, who obviously don't even hurt each other (you never see a killing or even just a defeated warrior lying dead on the ground).
There are a few positive points as well: Some of the animals are nicely animated, dialogue isn't too bad for this kind of movie, the children are not annoying for the most parts and there are a few nice landscape shots.
But after all that doesn't prevent Narnia from being a sterile, soulless movie without a story worth talking about. It might be fine for kids under 12 who can gasp at the whole "fantasy world with funny beings and kids as heroes" kind of thing, but it surely is nothing I would recommend to an adult viewer, who has seen at least one decent fantasy movie.