the message was clear, but too much cheese

Rating: 6/10 (11 December 2005)

Like everyone else, I had very high hopes for this movie. The movie stuck fairly close to Lewis's story. The stone table part was magnificent, and I think Lewis would've been very happy. Nuances such as Lucy and Susan's bewilderment of touching Aslan's mane were clearly there. However, cheese sank in from the very beginning as soon as the musical score came into focus. Contemporary music ruined the movies epic theme for me. As soon as I heard the Enya-esquire tribal sound coming out of the Cinerama's speaker system, I thought, "Great. Disney's gone the route of other film makers... cutting a deal for that one pop star." And I'm sure that their will be a number of other artists that will gain some monetary gain from all of this. Nothing but opportunistic BS. So, yeah, I thought the musical score stank to high heaven.
The children got a little annoying, and by the end, you really want to knock some sense into these characters. I think the director really settled for less with some of the scenes. It seemed as if the musical score (which already sucked to begin with) had to make up for the wretched bad acting; a combination which almost made me laugh out loud.
But I'm sure you're kids will like it. The animals were truly amazing. They were actually the best part of the film, I thought. The beavers rocked. I could watch a whole movie devoted just to them. Cute, cute, cute! Overall assessment: C- to D+