Is it possible to make the books even worse? Yes, it is.

Rating: 1/10 (18 December 2005)

I have read all the Narnia books. I never liked them. When I saw the trailer, I had my suspicions -- and went to see the movie anyway, thinking "they might have turned bad fantasy into good fantasy." No such luck.
Visuals and performance: The acting is shallow throughout, with the exception of Tilda Swinton, who is the only one deserving of any stars here. There are so many talented, brilliant child actors in Britain; why did they choose what can only be the worst of the selection? The effects are ridiculously bad; only a third-rate computer game should get away with such a disaster without attracting much criticism. In the rare moments where you manage to get caught up in the set, a horrible CGI sequence will throw you off again. Speaking of the set: When I read "ILM" in the credits, I gasped with disbelief. Is there an ILM temp brigade, or something?
Content: Everything bad about the books was amplified, and where you could have overlooked it in the books, you can't escape it in the movie: the kids go from being victims of war to participating in a war themselves (even the visual parallel between air raid and air attacks in the battle is unmistakable); independent thought and criticism, especially from girls, is undesirable (anything Susan says, no matter how sensible, is met with ridicule); mercy is almost entirely unheard-of (whose head would Jesus bite off?). Finally, there is ONE extremely if involuntarily funny scene; in fact, most of the audience in the theatre where I saw the film started laughing -- the resurrected Aslan, back-lit in a kitschy stone arch, complete with flowing mane and all, is a lion equivalent of a blonde, blue-eyed Jesus painted on black velvet. The sappiness is so overwhelming it becomes ridiculous. In short, Tilda Swinton's performance is the only thing worth seeing, but even that is not enough to redeem the movie as a whole.