Entertaining fantasy. What's in your wardrobe??

Rating: Null/10 (9 May 2006)

A lot has been made of CS Lewis and the Christian message that is contained in this story. I can see where one can make that connection, with the Lion, but it isn't by any means a necessary connection.
While I enjoyed this movie, I don't find it great. For many of us there is a secret fascination with the idea of a fantasy passage into another world. We saw it years ago in "Wizard of Oz", we saw it more recently in "Zathura." There have been many fantasy stories with this theme.
Here the youngest of the 4 Pevensie children, sent to a rural estate to be safe from WW II bombing of London, goes into a piece of furniture, a regular wardrobe, during a game of hide and seek with her siblings. As she goes past the various fur coats hanging up, suddenly and magically she is in an outdoor snow setting, nothing like the grounds outside the house. She quickly meets a faun, a strange looking creature that looks almost human above the waist, but had animal-like legs with hooves. She finds out she is in a land called 'Narnia.'
Eventually all the children end up in Narnia, where it has been cold for 100 years under the rule of wicked White Witch (Tilda Swinton). Plus, the children find out they have the duty to help bring springtime to Narnia, and make things right again.
Jim Broadbent has the small role of Professor Kirke, who lives at the country retreat. There are a couple of scenes where it appears that he knew about the passage to Narnia, perhaps even went there himself when he was small, but it is not treated in a definitive manner. At the end I didn't know what his role was in the whole story, if any. Perhaps fans of the CS Lewis books understand the whole story better. For me it was just "OK" entertainment.