Chronicles of Narnia: Lion, Witch...

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (Director: Andrew Adamson)

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE won 1 Oscar:

Makeup: Howard Berger, Tami Lane












Adamson directed the Shrek movies. Ann Peacock and Adamson, along with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely adapted the screenplay from C.S. Lewis's 1950 novel, the first of seven Chronicles published. It is the second according to Lewis's preferred order, however.

Clearly, the success of The Lord of the Rings paved a path for this movie to be made. Even though this chapter of the Chronicles literature came before Tolkein's trilogy in the fifties, the film version now has to stack up against one of the most successful franchises of all time. There are many of the same themes, but Lewis wrote his stories primarily for children (even though adults, obviously, could read them and enjoy without feeling dumb), and a lot of the events that occur in the book give that sensation of fear and dread before reversing it quickly, so as not to alarm a kid too much. This is where Chronicles may not succeed as much as LOTR did, because it may not get an average filmgoer in the seat. It may look too much for children.


This first chronicle of Narnia concerns the Pevensie children: Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley), who are sent to an English countryside mansion during World War II, a war in which their father fights and has gotten too close to home. During a hide-and-seek game, Lucy finds a spare room with a large wardrobe in which to hide, and as she moves further back she slowly enters another world, Narnia. After some false-starts in getting her siblings to believe her, they finally all enter and are told by talking beavers (voiced by Ray Winstone and Dawn French) that their coming fulfills a prophecy, that the Christ-like lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) is returning, and the fall of the White Witch Jadis (Tilda Swinton) is certain. This is good because Jadis has made Narnia a constant winter with no Christmas.

The movie is pretty darn faithful to the book, with some changes here and there, obviously. It's a nice adventure story with a couple of tingly moments; families will eat this up a great deal. Where my concern came into play was the WETA special effects. As much as Gollum was a huge leap towards making CGI less cartoony, CGI gets very cartoony here, even though it's better than most. I sometimes wonder, too, if Gollum was a better product due to the dark cinematography of LOTR, where "mistakes" could be hidden. Anyway, that's distracting. And many of the scenes look filmed on a soundstage (it's almost certain some were) rather than using the New Zealand landscape for a more breathtaking, you-are-there scope. Also, due to the bright cinematography, which is often outstanding, and the overall bright scheme, it's sometimes not as immersive an experience as I may have liked.

But when it comes to those complaints, those are just about technical matters. And although this movie probably could have used some better realism (like puppets...are we ever going to beat puppets?), the story is solid, and it should fill 2 1/2 hours nicely.