Okay, okay - I know that it’s really “The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” but that would be WAAAY to long. So: I FINALLY got it on DVD today. (I missed all of the movies last Christmas) And here’s what I thought…
The movie starts out with something that wouldn’t normally expect for a supposed PG kids movie to have: Nazi planes bombing London in The Blitz (I have a big test on that tomorrow.) Really, the first shot is of a Nazi plane. Talk about a bad example. Anyway, after the planes attack London, 4 brothers and sisters have to go on a train to live with a professor and his wife in the countryside of Britain, leaving their Mom behind. These kids aren’t supposed to go into the professor’s room. So, guess what? The youngest girl goes in while playing Hide and Go Seek (I love that game) and there’s a wardrobe in their. She opens up, walks into it and comes out on the other side - in another world! So the kids are introduced to the world of Narnia where an evil witch wants to rule the world, and a lion named Aslan wants to stop her. So there’s a lot of running and fake talking animals and then a big battle.
So… The acting in the movie is actually pretty good. The siblings relationships with each other are realistic, and their acting is great, especially the young girl. Seriously, she did a great job for her age. The other main character is “The White Witch” who is also a pretty good actor. Besides that, most of the main characters are… well, not human. Talking beavers, lions, horse-people (torso is a human, legs are of horses), boars, tigers, etc. The talking animals are a little bit hard to get used to, but they are real characters - they aren’t just animals. Of course, these animals are digitally created. The effects are good. Not amazing. King Kong beat these by far. But still, they really don’t distract from the story, which I guess is what matters. I love the part when one of the kids is training on a horse for the huge battle at the end, and his brother comes up, and the horse stands up on it’s back to legs and NEEEIIIGGHS. He says “Hey, careful horsey” The horse replies: “My name is Ralph.”
The end battle is very well done, seeing as most of it consists of computer-generated animals. But the best part of it is probably the music. Harry Gregson-Williams does a great job on the movie, especially in this part. I just can’t get that song out of my head!
The book by C.S. Lewis had A LOT of religous overtones, with Aslan the great lion being like Jesus, things like that. The movie keeps these things. When the kids are first seen by the beavers, they say “Wow, real sons of adam and daughters of eve!” (Should those be capitalized? I’m sorry, but I’m not so experienced in that religous area.)
The animals do look kinda fake as I mentioned before, and also the first 2/3 of the movie are really stretched out, so nothing really happens until the last half hour or so when the battle starts.
[rating:4.5]
The author of the book said ( I think ) that book was not intended to be religous. He said you can think that if you want or something like that.