Terrible.

Rating: 3/10 (15 July 2006)

If you read the book when you were a child and loved it, I suggest you avoid this film. (Especially if you are British, as it will annoy you intensely.) It's nice-looking, and the animals are fabulously done; if you like to marvel at how good CGI is these days, it might be worth seeing some clips. But as a rendition of the story, it's just soulless and not very much fun. As far as I can see, the only reason to watch this would be to poke fun at it afterwards, and even that's not massively entertaining. Ten reasons to avoid it:
*(minor spoilers)*
1) The music, which sounds like it came from a cheap library disc of the school of bad sub-Clannad pseudo-Celtica. I see many bargain bins in its future.
2) The tragically wooden child actors, with the exception of Skandar Keyes, who did a fairly good job with Edmund. Hate to say it of someone so young, but the actress playing Lucy had only two facial expressions - a grimace which supplied both happiness and tearfulness, and a sort of smirk for practically everything else. Susan appeared to have come out of the cupboard in which Hollywood keeps a constant supply of zombie child actors with huge, overly lipglossed mouths, and was infinitely forgettable. Peter was slightly less generic but snoresomely bland, and why on earth was he holding his sword like a gun?
3) The tacked-on opening scene, which was yawnsomely clichÃ©d and probably responsible for killing the music budget. It also caused me several minutes of stress while I thought we'd paid for the wrong film.
4) The tacked-on window-breaking scene - which sorry, soooo wouldn't have happened. These are nice, well-brought-up, polite, honourable 1940s children. They would have stood their ground and owned up immediately. Lucy and Peter, especially.
5) The American WOLF. Argh, argh, argh, there just aren't enough arghs in the world for this one. It pretty much killed the whole thing for me, and has probably caused small tornados in the vicinity of poor Lewis's grave.
6) The tacked-on waterfall scene. Utterly pointless and annoying. Bored now.
7) Father Christmas. Not dressed as Father Christmas. If you hadn't read the book, you'd probably have had no idea who he was; he appeared to be some random old bloke who liked giving out presents.
8) Liam Neeson: why?!! Star Wars buffs in the casting department? Only big name available at the time? Who knows. Aslan spoke, and everyone in the room immediately said 'Oh, that's Liam Neeson.' Spellbound by the majesty of the great Lion, not. There are probably hordes of unemployed Shakespearean actors who would have done a far better job for half the price. And if they really felt a desperate need to make Aslan Irish, they should have gone the whole hog and used Ardal O'Hanlon in full Father Ted mode. At least I'd have got a giggle out of it.
9) Tilda's hair. Oh dear. Jadis, Empress of the Western Lands, as New Age crusty? I think not. Can't decide whether wardrobe had been watching the Matrix sequel, or old Slits videos. As for the battle-scene hair, which appeared to be reconditioned from Jareth's in Labyrinth; it actually looked quite awesome, but I was really disappointed when the expected blast of death metal never happened. I like Tilda, but alas, only her hair was scary. And Jadis, you know: meant to be scary.
10) In short: it's basically before-the-watershed-MTV Narnia. Might make nice wallpaper if you turn the sound down. :)