An Excellent Tribute to CS Lewis's Classic

Rating: 9/10 (26 March 2006)

If anyone tries to tell you that this movie is boring, unconvincing, and has crappy special effects, don't listen to them. After reading a few of the user comments about this movie here on IMDb, one major trend I saw was that people thought that A, it was boring, B, it had bad special effects, and C, it was not a good adaptation. All 3 of these are completely wrong.
First of all, this film is anything but boring. The child actors chosen for the parts are the best choice in the world. These children play their parts to perfection, and they are completely believable as the Pevensie family. They are talented, believable, emotional, and they gel unbelievably well as brothers and sisters. I never once questioned their bond as siblings. They just....fit. Lucy's wide-eyed wonder when she first enters Narnia is magical...in fact Andrew Adamson specifically did not show the actress the set until that day...she was brought in blindfolded so that her expression of joy when the blindfold was taken off could be fully captured on camera. People's accusations for the boringness of the film are only due to the fact that the children take awhile to get to Narnia. If you are looking for a slam-bang movie with nonstop action, Narnia is not for you. It is a sweet, loving, tale with some mighty fine action in there, but with a core of four young kids in a foreign land, forced to become heroes by living up to the prophecy about them. I greatly respected the filmmakers choice to not try force the children into Narnia right away, without any back-story. The whole set up of the bombing in London, then the train trip to the house, then the hide and go seek game...it all worked perfectly to give the audience time to absorb, learn, and understand the characters of these children. Without this set-up...they wouldn't really be anything else than excuses to have action. The way the film works, with about an hour before any major action, is excellent.
As for the bad special effects accusation...this is simply absurd. The Chronicles of Narnia had some of the best special effects of the year, and the only picture that out-did it, I believe, was King Kong, whose special effects were mind-boggling. Nevertheless, Narnia's fx are a wonder to behold. They are so seamlessly integrated throughout the the film that everything seems incredibly real. The beavers, especially, are two of the most cute and believable CGI creations I have ever seen, including Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The wolves are also really well done. The final battle scene is perfect - the special effects pound at you for a good ten or fifteen minutes at the great clash between good and evil. Of course, the scale is nothing like Lord of the Rings, but Narnia is not meant to be a replacement for Lord of the Rings. It is meant as a tale in its own right....don't put comparisons on it that aren't meant or needed. For itself, it is a good action epic, and the special fx rival Lord of the Rings, even though the scale is not as grand. The greatest special fx creature in the movie, though, would be Aslan. Aslan is the most beautiful CGI creation I have ever seen on screen. Neither Kong nor Gollum, are beautiful, but Aslan is just that. He has just the ethereal, not quite real touch to make him believable as the Savior figure he is. His anger is mighty to behold, and his mane flows like the waves of the ocean.
Now for C - the accusation that the movie is a bad adaptation of a book. Making a movie out of a book is always tricky. You are never going to satisfy everybody, and you are never going to displease everybody. There are always some people out there who seem to think that a book is easy to translate into a movie. Well, here's news: It's not. Good movies made from books are few and far between, and for good reason: it's not easy making the transition. The screenplay writer/director has to make cuts, he has to NOT include everything. If everything in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wadrobe had been included, we'd be staring at a five hour movie. The director's and screenplay writer's ability to translate the book into a two and a half hour movie is admirable. And they did it while still maintaining the heart and soul of CS Lewis's classic. Some things had to be cut, and also - the movie is a movie, and should be judged as one. Movies are a completely different genre than books - there are things you can do in books which you can never do in movies, and there are things you can do in movies that you could never do in books. Narnia does an excellent job of taking a classic and making a perfectly admirable movie.
In closing, Narnia is one of the best films of the year. I highly recommend it - and don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you that it's a bad movie.