Not absolutely terrible, but nowhere close to good.

Rating: 3/10 (18 May 2008)

While I loved the work of C.S. Lewis, I was not expecting a masterpiece out of this movie seeing as though it garnered much pop-culture hype, Burger King endorsements, etc. But I still thought it would, or perhaps more aptly, could very much be a good film considering the original material they were working with. It saddens me to say that I was wrong. Well it doesn't sadden me that much. Just that one of the great stories of modern literature was so terribly adapted. But I'll get back to that.
For starters, I feel the filmmakers did an extremely poor job of accentuating the emotional mountains and valleys that take place in Lewis' original work; The discovery of Narnia, the death of Aslan, the resurrection of Aslan, etc. I could go on and on. All of these, terribly executed. We see Susan and Lucy absolutely weeping over Aslan when they've known him for, what, two scenes? Also, how is the audience even supposed to care by then, especially if strangers to the story? And the discovery of Narnia. When the children all discover Narnia for their respective first times, their on-screen action basically says,(in bland monotone) "Oh. Wow. Looook. A maagicall land called Narrniaaa..." Where is the wonder, awe, excitement? In the films, it is nowhere. It seems at almost every major turn of plot, plot clichés and digestible drama is used instead of bringing out the full power of the situations.
I won't do a big section on dialogue, but I'll just say that I'm glad I rented this movie and wasn't in the theaters because, on multiple occasions, I could just not hold back explosions of laughter. Again, clichés and digestible, "I've heard this line 1000 times in 1000 movies" lines seemed to dominate this film.
GRANTED, this film does not absolutely fail. Tilda Swinton did great. And, while some may disagree, the overall acting wasn't bad at all. It was as good as the script allowed it to be. Well almost. But you know what I mean. Anyways, like I was saying, this film does not fail completely because of ONE thing, and one thing only: The story. Like I said before, Lewis' original work is just simply classic. Heck, even a comic flip book based on The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe couldn't be TOO bad.
All in all, I was extremely disappointed in this adaptation. I know some people get sick of LOTR comparisons, but there's no way you can not compare the two. The LOTR films captured the heart of Tokien's writings, with drama, intellectuality, AND accessibility. TLTWATW just seemed to capture the heart of the box office. Nothing more.