Hey! You trod on my dreams!!, and the dreams of every child.

Rating: 1/10 (31 May 2008)

I haven't written a spoiler - the entire movie is one big spoiler for anyone who respects the written words of CS (Jack) Lewis for the treasures they are, and who hopes that their child might learn a love of reading and develop their own imagination without being told what or how to think.
Problem one - Where is The Magician's Nephew? Without that before LW&W you are only getting Narnia Lite, despite what the theological purists say about the reading order.
Problem two - Jack Lewis wrote the stories to get children to think and imagine for themselves. Showing children what to imagine is like doing their homework for them, but on a much more soul-destroying and life-long scale.
Problem three - the voice-overs were chosen for pop-appeal rather than from serious quality actors. Comediennes and pop singers!!! A travesty wrapped in a farrago of misrepresentations.
Problem four - a wise person said that the Chronicles of Narnia should be read four times - as a child, as a young adult, in middle age and finally in old age, because the words of Jack Lewis will bring you a different kind of joy each time.
How can you do that with a movie? I can't think of a crueller thing to do to the memory and legacy of Jack Lewis or to your own children than to show them what and how to imagine rather than giving them the books and letting them imagine Narnia for themselves.
Except to show them the earlier 'muppet' version, but the crippling of the childhood imagination is the same unless they read the original words for themselves.
Truly great books were never meant to be recycled into celluloid, and this is one instance. Lewis wanted to teach children to think and imagine for themselves, and this film does neither and cripples both.
All in all, give your children the printed words of Lewis for the rest of their lives, not some flack's CGI imagination, editorial compromises and pop-culture voice-overs for a couple of hours of electronic babysitting.
This movie could debase the opportunity to imagine for one's self, for an entire generation of children who might have learned to love to read.
If you truly love your children, buy them the books and skip the fake film version - a cluster-bomb for a child's imagination and intellect.