Flat

Rating: 3/10 (4 May 2008)

Like many other reviewers, I read the series of books years ago when I was a kid. Lewis's writing has a light touch that is easily read and understood by children, and the deeper messages are there for anyone who looks for them. For children, his writing is bold and exciting, and stepping into Narnia for the first time is like a breath of fresh air: the characters are rich and sharp, and the scenes are clearly portrayed. The Chronicles of Narnia are not just a work of escapism for children, but at their heart they represent an idealistic moralism that, unfortunately, many religious people have claimed as their own, when in actuality they stand on their own merit without any reinterpretation by religious nuts. Lewis was keenly aware of how his work was viewed, and never intended his children's books to be interpreted as metaphors for religion.
That said, there is something about Lewis's excitement and sense of immediacy that is sorely lacking in this beautiful but flat film. It all seems kind of cheap and slapped together somehow. Where Lewis describes Narnia in terms of its newness and its impression upon the Pevensie children, Adamson the director fails to convey this excitement on screen. The characters are flat, one does not feel their sense of wonder at this new world, and in no other recent movie that I can think of has it been more obvious that the actors were tired of standing in front of green screens conjuring up reactions to things that are added in later during post production.
The special effects are ho-hum. The waterfall scene, for example, went on far too long and contributed nothing to the story, on top of looking like a scene out of a made-for-TV movie. Aslan is particularly hokey, with his fur that doesn't move like the fur of any other lion in the world, and it doesn't help that Liam Neeson's forced, creepy voice is meant to impart the deep wisdom that Lewis so carefully portrayed in the book. I hear Liam Neeson and I think of his tongue-in-cheek role in Darkman, and it kind of blows the whole Aslan thing for me.
One might expect that the icily beautiful Tilda Swinton was perfectly cast as the white witch, when in actuality most of the time she appears as though she can't remember her lines. The best actor of the bunch is Georgie Henley as Lucy, a natural born actor if there ever was one.
All in all, a disappointing effort from what was probably a collaboration by hundreds of people and millions of dollars, desperately trying to inject some humanity or heart into a film composed largely of poorly rendered computer graphics.
Lewis would probably have walked out of this film, shaking his head and thinking "oh well, children can still have a much better time reading the book. Long after this movie is forgotten, they will be reading the book."