A Kids' Movie Where You're Not Supposed to Think and You're Not Supposed to Do Anything but Escape for Two Hours and Return to Your Life Afterward

Rating: 7/10 (19 January 2009)

The fantasy genre provides us with a way of viewing the universal conditions of the world, the environment, governments, and other large-scope subjects with an objective eye. Somehow, all we seem to get out of it nonetheless is the spectacle of these stories, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Northern Lights series, the Narnia series. There is a lot more that could be done with The Chronicles of Narnia. I am not sure of whether or not I'm talking about the original work by C.S. Lewis as well as this film version or just the latter, because I have never read the books. From what I've seen here, and thus from what the new generation of children are seeing, is innocent abandon. There is no real import in the concept of a wardrobe that arbitrarily leads into an alternate world without humans full of mythological creatures and talking wolves and beavers.
I feel as if the concept should've been put in the hands of Neil Gaiman, who once wrote a novel told from the point of view of a bus. I am thrilled by the idea of a humanless world, but not by populating it with humans. I enjoyed the non-human characters, and I enjoyed the audacity of the filmmakers who allowed Tilda Swinton's witch to be a truly vicious villain, an icy, power-hungry and completely ruthless baddie. I was affected by a scene between her and Aslan, a wise and idealistically good lion, and I can imagine how much children would be bothered by it. But for what? Is this the three English siblings' fortunate escape from the harrowing WWII from which they've been sent away by their mother?
Everything about the story seems entirely unsystematic and with no real underpinnings, except that Aslan seemingly represents Christ for devout Christian C.S. Lewis. Tilda Swinton plays the White Witch as if to represent Satan. Why does time go on in Narnia and when the siblings return to the reality of the British manor home they have only spent a few seconds of reality? Why is the alternate reality called Narnia? It is all a haphazard succession of building blocks leading to what to which all of the fantasy adventures lead: the big battle between these creatures and those creatures. Pure good and pure evil. Black and white. Love and hate. More diverting scapegoating and jingoism for the kids who recently lost their father and are only left to bicker with themselves till they stumble upon a parallel world, which to them is an emotional distraction more than anything else. They could make their goals to retreat back into the wardrobe, but they would rather consume themselves with drama that is far removed from their own. Is there anything wrong with that? No, it's natural. But why would fantasy settle on such common human weaknesses when it supposedly transcends every other everyday convention?
It's a kids' movie where you're not supposed to think and you're not supposed to do anything but escape for two hours and return to your life afterward. That is not the way we are supposed to look at things. We cannot turn our minds off, no matter how hard we try. Children absorb everything. They absorb histrionics and dramatics. One appeal of the story could be that its magic and myth are determined not by the arbitrary world-building technicalities that many fantasy writers pull from their sleeves, though that certainly still occurs here as much as in Tolkien or Rowling's stories, but by the markedly English tenacity of the human kids. I do love that this film, like countless other kids' movies, humanizes and familiarizes animals of all kinds. But the story offers not much in the way of acceptance or moral dichotomies.