Disappointed

Rating: 1/10 (19 December 2005)

The Narnia books occupy a space in my soul, and I couldn't be more unhappy and disappointed by this production. While the Chronicles of Narnia were written to delight children, C.S. Lewis made it a point never to "talk down" to children, and this is exactly what is done in this film. The plots of the Narnia books are child-like, while the themes concern (as do great works of literature) what it means to be human. They are anything but childish. Unfortunately, in the hands of this director and Disney, TLTW&TW has been trivialized by the unforgivable overuse of saccharine background music and typical Disney over-sentimentality. All of the power and beauty of this book has been removed--I had the sense that Disney was in such a hurry to cash in on Narnia that the dedication, time, and love necessary to take on a task such as this (the kind that Peter Jackson drew upon in putting the Lord of the Rings on screen) is strikingly, painfully absent.