Disappointing: Narnia doesn't come across as convincingly real

Rating: 3/10 (25 November 2005)

A short advance review  I saw the film last night and I won't bother with a summary here: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is disappointing from the moment the child-actors enter Narnia, and it becomes outright bad after Father Christmas passes by on his sledge. Unlike The Lord of the Rings'"Middle-Earth, this fantasy-land never quite comes across as real. The reasons for this are four:
1.) The Special Effects are very mixed: some work, others don't. While the wolves are impressive and Aslan seems hyper-realistic, if somewhat like a giant talking toy-animal, many of the other creatures are lifeless or rather, soulless. Worse, the wintry landscapes recreated on sound-stages are plainly artificial, and the matte paintings in some scenes are simply awful, as is the breaking ice on the CGI-river. Then there's the lack of attention to detail. Why on earth do Mr. Tumnus' ears never move? They seem like nothing so much as fur-covered rubber-attachments, which in fact they are. (Otherwise Mr. Tumnus, played by James McAvoy is one of the film's few highlights.)
2.) More importantly, the child actors are obviously out of their depths when it comes to acting in front of a blue-screen. A lot of "The Lord of the Rings" works because the actors convincingly interact with each other as well as with the fantastic environment . In this film, that doesn't happen. The children are also hopelessly foundering when asked to portray the admittedly difficult process of turning into kings and queens. It's not enough to dress them up with some live action role playing costumes and hand them a sword for them to have them overcome their apparent awkwardness when faced with their roles.
3.) Some of the above may be due to the fact that director Andrew Adamson doesn't have much experience with live action movies, but comes from a Special Effects background. One example: When Edmund  incidentally the only child whose acting was impressive (but then, unlike the others, he had some character-development to portray)  stumbles into Narnia and falls backwards into the snow, he doesn't even bother to shake off the wet stuff that must have entered his clothes at the neckline. Anyone ever went skiing and fell? Or got hit by a snowball? See what I mean?
4.) Then of course some of the problems lie with Lewis'book. An amalgamate of fairy-creatures from all the myths in the world that don't really have any important dramatic justification just isn't to everybody's taste (it certainly wasn't to Tolkien's, a fact which caused their friendship to cool considerably). While such a miscellaneous fairy-world may work in print, i.e. in children's minds, it certainly is difficult to portray on screen without going heavy on the cliché-side.
Thus the tag of a Lord of the Rings"-for-kids used to describe this film is misleading. It marks perhaps the aspirations of the filmmakers, but not the final product, rather underlining once more the unique achievement of Peter Jackson (whose LotR-films, I haste to say, I didn't wholly like either; see my reviews). It also draws attention to some obvious parallels: The monsters, the final battle, the way Jadis walks up to and fights Edmund  this last very reminiscent of Lurtz fighting Boromir, who was also a traitor, and Aragorn, who was also a king.
The one thing I liked about this movie was Jadis as the Evil White Witch, played superbly by Tilda Swanson. I also thought that the costume-designers/make up artists did a nice job when they endowed her with a neat black and white imagery that underlined the black-and-white-opposition of good and evil that Lewis' plot is based on: The evil witch is white as ice, but her eyes never light up. The Faun opposing her is dark and rugged, but his eyes shine.
Thus in the end, with Jadis, Edmund and Mr. Tumnus respectively standing out, if not redeeming this film, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is another instance of the fact well known since Dante's Hell and Milton's Paradise Lost, i.e. that it is always a lot easier to portray the absolute evil than it is to portray the absolute good.