Four Go To Narnia...

Rating: 7/10 (10 March 2011)

I enjoy classic children's literature almost as much as the grown-up stuff and have read C S Lewis' full Chronicles of Narnia, although not for many years. Still, did this latest blockbuster adaptation thrill me as the book did...certainly it did.
The story is initially quite slow-paced, obviously laying out the children's characters and attempting to individualise their traits for the viewer until Lucy accidentally backs into Narnia and things as would expect pick up from there. It's a pity that the movie was made in the wake of the "Harry Potter" and "Lord Of The Rings" series, where little people / children also encounter magic, talking animals and have to face up and face down the forces of evil in a foreign land, so that some of the scenes and situations seem a little second-hand to viewers, like me, of the others.
So maybe, with their lack of familiarity, that's why the four children here seem a little stiff an strange in their attitudes, whilst remembering all the time that kids were very different and had different outlooks 70 odd years ago. The acting of the children is perfectly acceptable but I just didn't feel they any of them made a lasting impression in at least this viewer's memory, with the possible exception of the young girl playing Lucy.
As you would expect, the anonymity of the children in the leads is compensated, like in Potter, by having big-name British character actors in the more substantial supporting roles. These include a quite scrawny looking Tilda Swinton as the wicked witch, the dependable Jim Broadbent as the aged, knowing owner of the house which contains the magic wardrobe and, rather oddly, young hot-shot James McAvoy as the impish faun Mr Tumnus who darts in and out of the story.
The special effects are very good on the whole in the scenic depiction of Narnia and its inhabitants bar one or two obvious matte background shots and the C-Gen grand battle at the end is convincingly done if perhaps not up to Peter Jackson standards. That's a great weapon old Tilda has, by the way! All the talking animals are well rendered too both in movement and of course speech synchronisation.
As I said above, it's a shame that the Narnia adaptation didn't get green-lighted before Potter as I think there's better story-telling afoot here but this big-budget feature has managed to spawn, if belatedly, to date two successors. Let's hope all seven get made, none of the books certainly are long enough, if memory serves, to be split into two, or three come to that.