Typical Disney mess

Rating: 3/10 (11 August 2006)

The problem with Disney is that they try way too hard to sell the product, to rake in the big bucks, and it is quite obvious when one watches this "epic." While the cast is quite good and attractive, too much just did not work here. Why does Disney always have to include the standard "talking animals doing the stand-up comedy bit?" The wolves looked good, genuinely scary, until the lead wolf started to talk. He sounded as menacing as Richard Simmons. I guess the guys at Disney were afraid that if they included any scary or intense moments at all, then the parents wouldn't shell out the bucks at the movie houses and then at the DVD store. Everything was so fanatically politically correct. No, the oldest boy could never stab the wolf that was about to eat his brother and sisters. The wolf literally jumped on the sword. I am not saying the film should have been filled with the same frightful images as the thousand times better LOTR. But this limp adaption of a classic children's book is just disappointing. Every commercial stunt was pulled here to ensure big numbers at the box office. I hate this kind of movie-making. And even more, i miss the days before computer imaging replaced real special effects, or real anything for that matter. Why build a magnificent kingdom, even if it is on miniature scale, when they can simply super-impose the image onto the screen? It must save the studios billions of dollars. The only problem is, it looks like crap. It was obvious that most of the landscape was simply not there. Personally if i want to look at this kind of thing, I would prefer simple animation, classic Saturday morning cartoons. I suppose after the cinematic milestone that was Lord Of the Rings, it will be quite difficult for anything to live up to that films grandeur. And perhaps computer imaging was used in LOTR, but it was done so much better. The landscapes, the cities, the million plus armies, actually looked real for the most part. I guess however, that kids will love "Narnia." Most kids are fairly easy to please. Look at all the junk on TV every Saturday morning! This one is a disappointment.