Finally Makes It to the Screen, and Guess What? It's Pretty Darn Good!

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2005)

Oh, expectations where high, as I rabidly loved this series of books when I was a kid. How relieved I was, therefore, when I discovered that they made a pretty good movie from C.S. Lewis's debut Narnia novel.
At first I was worried. A clunky and unnecessary prologue depicting the London blitz and the children's journey to their uncle's home in the country didn't help, and the children themselves seemed pretty bland. But the director and screenwriter were wise enough to keep things clipping along, and it's not long before Lucy has ventured into the wardrobe for the first time. Her first scene with the faun Mr. Tumnus set the tone, and from that moment on, I felt Lewis's story was in good hands.
Little Georgie Henley is a fine little actress; I thought at first her Lucy was going to be too sweet and syrupy, a la many a child actor. But instead she was spunky, just as one would expect based on the way she's written in the book. The actor who plays Edmund is good too; he and Lucy are the most vivid of the children. Susan and Peter are a bit more bland, but that's o.k.; they're bland in the book too, and it's no surprise that their characters only make it through the first two novels before being written out entirely.
Tilda Swinton gives a magnificent performance as the White Witch. There were many times when she had to have been reacting to little more than a blue screen, but she's never less than superb. Liam Neeson voices Aslan nicely, and the lion itself is one of the best special effects I've seen all year.
Narnia looks just the way I imagined it when I read the books. The film makers feel no need to tinker with what is already a perfect story, and the only additions they make (like the action set piece on the frozen river) are minor and take nothing away. I liked the tone of the film as well. This was not a Disneyfied version of the story. The books, though written for kids, were dark and intense. The moral conflicts felt real, and there was always the feeling that the children were being forced to grow up too fast, to deal with adult realities before they had developed the adult emotions to go with them. An apt story for a WWII audience, and the movie wisely keeps the tone. The killing of Aslan, in particular, is quite scary and disturbing.
The climactic battle scene is spectacular. It obviously owes something to Peter Jackson's recent "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, but it doesn't steal from those movies. Indeed, given the fact that those movies are so fresh in everyone's minds and so ready for comparison, it's very high praise to say that "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" holds its own against Jackson's films.
Die hard fans of the books should not be disappointed, and those who haven't read them just may be able to tell why they're so loved by seeing this film.
Grade: A