We just got back from seeing The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and really, there are lots of worse ways to spend an afternoon.
The palette of the film works much better on a big screen than it did in a preview on television. It looked garish at that scale, but it’s richer. The whole film is beautiful, actually, and the CGI elements have enough personality to overcome the moments when they look kind of clunky.
I loved the books as a kid, and I keep meaning to reread them. If my memory can be trusted, they did a very solid job of translating the story. There are some movie-ish moments (a tag line at the end of a dramatic sequence that feels like you’ve seen it in a hundred movies already, even if the line itself is different), but there aren’t too many (like in Chris Columbus’s Harry Potter movies).
The strongest elements of the movie were the performances of Georgie Henley as Lucy and Skandar Keynes as Edmund, the most pivotal of the four Pevinsie children who stumble through the wardrobe and into Narnia. Henley in particular almost has to carry the film on her tiny shoulders. She’s tasked with convincing the audience of the wonder and humor and terror of Narnia, and she pulls it off without seeming like she’s even trying. Keynes is perfectly sullen, resentful, and alienated without going over the top or making you despise him. He’s a believably unhappy kid, and he plays remorse equally well. (Rose Curtin had talked about certain movies having a shojo manga vibe to them. Henley and Keynes, with their huge, endlessly expressive eyes look like manga characters come to life.)
William Moseley as Peter and Anna Popplewell as Susan have less interesting roles as caretakers and scolds of the younger children, and they don’t really do anything to surpass expectations. They’re okay, and they’re attractive, but they’re the solid, responsible siblings, and they’re never as much fun as the black sheep or the innocent. Moseley isn’t quite up to the arc that’s constructed for him, but I don’t really know if better acting would have helped.
Lots of reviews have raved about Tilda Swinton as the White Witch. She’s clearly having a ball, but she was much too rock star for my tastes. There wasn’t any genuine menace, just extremism. (There was a badly animated version in the 1970s, and I remember that version of the witch being absolutely terrifying.)
All in all, though, it’s pretty good entertainment for matinee prices. I should add that if you’re a parent thinking of taking a pre-schooler to this, you might reconsider. There was a three- or four-year-old down the row from us, and she spent the entire film either bored out of her mind or sobbing in terror. Make of that what you will.