Wonderful adaptation and well worth seeing

Rating: 9/10 (10 December 2005)

Quite simply, I thought The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was a brilliant movie. I would give it 8.5/10, but since you can't give halves here I've given it the benefit of the doubt. I'll explain my rating:
1. Unfortunately, as much as I've tried to resist, Hollywood has "gotten" to me, and I found the first 1/3 of the movie a big lagging--I'm afraid I've been brainwashed into wanting action, as much as my heart desires non-action. 2. Apart from that, I wasn't very happy with some of the plot discrepancies (ie wolves with the fox, river/ice scene, and Edmund meets Tumnus in "prison"), although of course it could've been a lot worse. 3. Although in general the acting was fine, at times it did seem rather stilted to me, but for four children I thought they did remarkably. 4. The last thing that bothered me very slightly was (which comes with plot discrepancies I suppose) the omission and addition of certain lines. These were nothing major, however.
As to things I liked: 1. At first I was afraid that they were severely watering down the religious message too, which would really have bothered me, but it turned out that they didn't, and keeping in mind this is first and foremost an adventure story, and shouldn't be pushing the message in anyone's face, the slight toning down I felt worked well. 2. Surprisingly, the soundtrack--it seemed out of place at first, but I realized within a short while that I really liked the contrast (from jazz-hide and seek scene- to Enyaesque to epic, it all worked for me). 3. The fear that they would go for the epic "look" (in the vein of LotR, Gladiator, etc.) was my biggest concern, and based on the trailers I was afraid they would go with that. I was very pleasantly surprised that they didn't, and it remained beautiful in its simplicity. 4. The CGI--what can I say? In the trailers, I thought some of it looked a bit fake, but on seeing the movie in its entirety I was blown away by the realism of all the animals, and in particular the beavers. 5. Surprisingly, LWW turned out to be fairly "artistic" too, yet it wasn't so artistic that it could in any way be put in that genre alongside movies such as Garden State for instance, and I felt the balance of the "artistic" element with down-to-earth simplicity was handled excellently.
I suppose I would've given it a slightly higher rating if it had met the standards I outlined above, but overall I was delighted, and it certainly surpassed everything I expected of it. Having said all this, I'm not a film critic, so I'm in no position to judge it based on its "artistic" or filming/directing/producing merits--I'm simply basing this opinion on my own enjoyment of the film. Highly recommended.