Good Movie. (period/full stop) Not Harry Potter. (period/full stop) No comparisons, please.

Rating: 8/10 (10 December 2005)

I beg to differ with Ms. Catherine Jones but this is not a "better movie than Harry Potter" - it is a DIFFERENT movie than Harry Potter. (It's also different than LOTR but there are some similarities.) Obviously, as the 6th or 7th sequel to Narnia comes out the lines will be less firmly drawn but this is simply a different movie about a different book. All three (HP, Narnia, and LOTR) are adaptations of VERY popular book series and, as such, must remain as faithful as possible to the original story to retain fans of the books. But they are distinctly different movies (books) which happen to touch on overlapping themes at times.
I have read all of the HP books at least once and the same for LOTR. This is not true about Narnia. However, I have read other C.S. Lewis and, perhaps most importantly, a primordial version of Narnia (not called that but many of the ideas came from there) which Clive wrote with his brother when he was 8 or 9 years old. What IS similar about the three authors, and hence the three movies to some extent, is the ability to build a fantasy world peopled with very real characters who exhibit some very real human traits and situations (in spite of the fact of their fantastic or non-human form).
I would not/did not/could not judge this movie in comparison to HP or LOTR because I would have to find it lacking. I would recommend judging it on it's own merits. It is a good move. The series may some day become a great series. But Peter Jackson's LOTR was a feat like none other and stands on it's own. The same is true of the HP series but in a different vein - this is a collection of film adaptations made by a number of different directors yet hearkens to and keeps us connected to the series of books which is still evolving within our lifetime - there is a connectedness between the evolution of the books, the characters, and the films that has it's own appeal - not unlike the serializations of Charles Dickens or Arthur Conan Doyle. But enough of those other series - I said that I dost not compare this movie to they.
This first of the Narnia stories was a good movie. By comparison to all lesser movies (common Hollywood drek) it may even be a very, very good movie. But comparing it to HP or LOTR can only reduce it's appeal.
The CG was a little less perfect than it could have been. The child actors were outstanding and the adults did not get in the way. (I do think that I will go back and watch some of Ms. Swindon's earlier films such as "Female Perversions" ...)
I do recommend it and, especially for the holidays, it is an excellent family movie.