A Chronicle of Mediocrity in the Making?

Rating: Null/10 (12 January 2006)

The Chronicles of Narnia...
One of 2005's highly anticipated movies, Narnia chronicles the adventure of four siblings during wartime Britain who stumble through a wardrobe into the land of Narnia, where they end up fighting alongside Aslan the Lion against the evil doings of the White Witch.
There are two ways of seeing this film, from my perspective. Firstly, let me put it positively. I made a comment to my friend when I came out of the cinema, "When I came out of the cinema after watching Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, I was vomiting blood due to watching a complete cinematic disaster. I came out of Narnia thinking, 'ok, not bad.'" It's not a bad film. But it's not a great film either. There is a certain barrier that Andrew Adamson seem to be unable to lift the film above it. Many of the cinematic sequence are deserving of wows and pows, like the build-up to the final battle, where the eagles soared and the animals charged. The animation of the beavers, and the other animals, were close to perfection.
But there was magic missing. Narnia felt very much like a frayed edge of a beautiful portrait. It just wasn't smooth enough, or great enough. It left me wanting more. A good example of the same feeling would be Bryan Singer's first installment of X-Men. The film made me want more, and unsatisfied. But X2 built up from it nicely and turned out to be one of my favorite movies.
So perhaps Narnia can build on this film. It's not a bad foundation, and if Harry Potter can slowly improve over the years (Goblet of Fire, the 4th installment, is pretty good), Narnia certainly has a greater potential to do even better.
6/10
(this show didn't deserve an Oscar nomination for Visual Effects)