Highly flawed.

Rating: 5/10 (8 December 2005)

The good parts:
The character of Lucy was likable, and well acted(mostly). Dawn french is always a pleasure to hear.
The bad parts: The rest of the kids were a bit rubbish, truth be told. Most of the acting in this film was sub-par. I even thought Liam Neeson's voice acting was a tad forced.
Maybe it wasn't bad acting, maybe the actors were just given the worst dialogue in the history of the world. Yeah, that was probably it.
OK, it wasn't the worst dialogue in the world, but it was the worst dialogue of any film that i've ever seen. Whoever wrote the screenplay for this should rethink their career. it sounded like something an illiterate teenager would rite(sic).
The cinematography was appalling... all the time. It even tried (unsuccessfully) to copy Lord of The Rings in places. Especially a bit when the kids and the two beavers are hiding under a big rock. The way this was filmed mimics the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where the hobbits are hiding under the big tree root from the ringwraith. It is almost shameful to watch. thankfully, poor acting and a total lack of intelligent cinematography makes the scene devoid of tension.
Visually, the entire film (the bit in narnia, anyway) reeks of LOTR. But this is probably due to the similar themes that the two books shared. Yet, even when taking their inspiration from such great works, the people responsible for the style of the film miserably failed. It sometimes felt like this film had an extremely low budget.
The sets were poor. Watching LOTR, i barely ever thought to myself "that scenery doesn't look real", but in pretty much every shot of this film(again, while the kids were in narnia), i noticed how blatant it was that they were on a film set.
The cgi is mostly pants. Aslan was pretty damn impressive, but the beavers, the fox, the wolves... all the other creatures were unbelievable(in a bad way).
Speaking of the wolves, as the main antagonists for part of the film, they weren't scary at all. Even the ice queen wasn't scary. Mostly due to her inane dialogue.
The "funny" moments were about as funny as the rest of the moments in the film(meaning they weren't funny).
Children will no doubt enjoy the film regardless of (and oblivious to) the above observations. And that's fine. But if you are looking for something that will captivate and immerse the viewer like the LOTR trilogy did, keep looking. I've heard that new harry potter movie is quite good.