For a while it seemed like there was no way for them to get the movie wrong. After all, the story has everything that made "Lord of the Rings" so great -- magic, sword battles, mythical creatures... But "Chronicles of Narnia: The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" proves how far a director's vision goes in bringing a movie to life.
Narnia, overall just lacks the polish and beauty of LotR. And while some might think it unfair to judge this movie on the benchmarks set by an entirely different cast and crew, I must say that the movie itself (or at least the distribution company's marketing department) has set itself up for this comparison. The early hype went on and on about Weta's contribution to the movie's special effects and how their vision, which transformed LotR into the masterpiece that it is, would make Narnia even greater.
Allow me to disillusion you now. Narnia is bland and only mildly entertaining. The costumes often look like bad puppets and the CGI creatures seem to stand out from the rest of the scenery. But of course, effects aren't everything.
Unfortunately, I never felt drawn into the story either. The overall idea of the story is fine, I suppose. Kids get sent to live with a relative and find a magical means by which they can travel to another world where they get caught up in a battle between good and evil. But I never really buy into motivation of these kids for fighting in the battle. All the creatures they meet seem to accept without question that they are the "chosen ones". That they alone may save the land of Narnia from the wicked witch... but why? And why do these kids believe any of it? Are they so impressionable that they accept that they and they alone can change the tide of a war?
Allright, fine. There are prophecies and Aslan the true king of the land (who is apparently God or Jesus, I can't tell... maybe he's both) has proclaimed the two sons of Adam and the two daughters of Eve to be the land's kings and queens. And for the sake of argument I'll even accept that all the creatures are extremely devout and take Aslan's word as pure law. Why would Aslan bother with the kids? He's clearly more powerful than the witch. She clearly fears his power. Why doesn't he just kill her and be done with it.
This movie also suffers from bad child acting. Can't be helped I suppose. It's not always bad enough to be noticed, but it's there.
The color composition in this movie just flat out irritated me. For the most part it felt like I was watching a black and white movie. Granted the land is supposed to look bleak and dreary, but even scenes where there should be more life and color looked drab. Even scenes that should have looked "warm" look sad simply because they exchanged the black and white scheme with black and orange. So irritating!
I will add one last criticism. The one large battle scene in this movie was pretty sad. Maybe it was just that by the end I didn't care who won. But honestly, this was just ho-hum. Even a centaur fighting a minotaur could not console me after watching a mish mash of CGI animals plow into each other half-heartedly.
So that's it. I didn't like this film. Kids might like it but I feel sorry for the parents that get dragged along. I wouldn't call it a total failure but I just can't bring myself to care about any of the characters or their troubles.
