Too little magic, too much epic

Rating: 6/10 (8 December 2005)

I saw this with 6 eight year old boys, which may have influenced my opinions somewhat, but they were not gripped by this. Firstly though, there is a lot right with this movie. The special effects are stunning. How they got Susan and Lucy to walk through the forest with Aslan I will never know - the problem was I found myself trying to work that out, rather than gripped by the narrative. The kids are great. Georgie as Lucy is particularly good I think - very Lucyish and Skander manages to make Edmund less of a prig and more angry and at odds with the world. THere are epic scenes (the boys all said they liked the battle scene yet, and acted some of it out in the pizza restaurant afterwards), and swooping vistas and vast tracking shots and rousing music. Its just that I had never really thought of Narnia like that. In becoming epic, they have lost two things - the magic and the playfulness. Lets take the magic first. A tiny point, but the snow didn't sparkle. You know how snow glistens and glints ? Well not in this Narnia it didn't. It wasn't a magical place to wander into - it was all too big for a start - massive walls of rock and huge mountains. Not strange enough a landscape (and it looked VERY like some of the landscapes in Lord of the Rings) - not intimate enough.
And the playfulness ? This Narnia isn't a fun place to be. We lose some of the fun of the Beavers and their house. THey cut some of the scenes which would have lightened up the narrative (like when Aslan comes to life, in the book he runs around and plays tag, and they all end up in a heap laughing and excited and HAVING FUN. In the film, he gives a roar and they are off to the next scene. In the book when they rescue Mr Tumnus they dance around for joy - in the film there are tears and hugs). Now, I can see how a country under the spell of a white witch for 100 years may not be a lot of fun, but its a long movie to sit through without some lightness. Even the crowning scene at the end is too uninvolved and not fun enough - where was the personal, the relationships ? It looked like a really dull party to me. There is also a very curious new scene, which doesn't seem to add much - involving them getting stuck on an ice floe as the snow melts. This takes up quite a bit of time for no apparent reason - I couldn't see how it added to the narrative, and again - the ice in the waterfall is grey, not sparkly and glittering.
SO to sum up - good acting, interesting story - which took itself all a bit too seriously, and missed the point. Its a kids movie which has forgotten what its like to be a kid.