Shock and Awful

Rating: 5/10 (10 December 2005)

It doesn't cease to amaze me how Walden continues to bring down great directors.
Holes, while I had never read the books, had the same stilted hollowness that they managed to infuse into the Narnia tales (and that's WITH Disney helping) and that film was directed by the same director as the Fugitive! (Around the World in 80 Days was a travesty against the original work, but it kind of worked since Jackie Chan became the main character) How does Walden do it? How do they manage to wreck such great material? Despite having Mr. Gresham on board, the writer/director/maybe even some of the actors miss the feel of the book. Maybe it's not possible to replicate that on-screen: ever. But they should have at least tried for a more serious treatment. This was way too kiddish: like it was made for the Chicken Little crowd. I was hoping for something much better, much more sobering.
As far as acting goes, Georgia Henley is the best. She was the life of the movie. But as a result, everyone else (especially Susan) came off looking a little stiff. It never seems that the characters get to change much. They start off as one might expect, but by the end it doesn't seem like they're much different except for those crown things on their heads.
The music was terrible. Pop-ballads done with a symphony sounds cheap. Where was the theme music?
The editing was terrible: unless you're just advertising to sell an extended version of the DVD. (Hey audience: if you feel unsatisfied, buy the real movie next year!)
The children should have gotten lost like they did in the book so we didn't have to waste time having Peter and Susan whining about going home the entire film (oh bother, we have to rescue Edmund first...)
Very little build up to Aslan. No build up to the war. Trying to be Lord of the Rings, but Narnia isn't Middle Earth and they should never have tried to make it that way.
The witch's wolves have American accents: why?
The worst thing was the loss of the intangible feeling of discovery and wonder of a world within a world. I don't know how hard it would be to create it (in some respects the BBC version still had this feeling), but if you're going to spend $120 million, you sure shouldn't leave it behind.
I think this comes down to bad writing and too many corporate milk-toast spines having influence. All you needed was a real screenplay (one that they apparently weren't willing to pay for since they went with the cheap just of school writer) and someone who was passionate about the story and the BE ALLOWED to tell it. With only three or four lines of dialog being from the original book, I almost doubted whether Walden had actually optioned the material from the CS Lewis Estate! Watching the film did give me hope for one thing: it may still be possible for me to remake it some day. True, I'm American and I'm overly critical, and it will be 30 years before anyone will even care to see it again: but after seeing this film: I want to try. I think that's what having British people write/direct this British work does. They can't feel the book, because the book is nearly everyday English life and they can't see how that's interesting. (Remember the book didn't do that well in England, the US is where Lewis got his child readers) But there's a whole feeling that as an American I get from the book that is essentially idealised English family life, something that many Brits can't stand anymore. There's nothing for them to do than try to update and "modernize" it away: but when, as an American, that's a large part of what I enjoyed.
Solution: have an American write and direct the movie, and don't let a single American have a voice on screen!