Monday, December 12, 2005 1:40 PM
Well my wife and I went with our boys to see Narnia on Friday (opening day!). It was actually Karen's birthday, and boys split the cost of her ticket for their gift. We read the books (the whole series) as a family about a year ago. We all greatly enjoyed them, but lamented the lack of a great movie adaptation. We'd seen the animated and BBC-produced live action movies of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
before, but neither were particularly impressive. Fun to watch for what they were, but definitely not doing C. S. Lewis justice.
When we first started seeing trailers for the new movie, we were all excited. This is definitely the movie we've been waiting for! We showed up a half hour early to get first dibs on seats, and got right smack in the middle of the theatre where we hoped to be!
From the first moment, we knew this was the movie. The visuals are spectacular, the acting is first-rate, and, best of all, the story is true to the original. We really expected a dumbed-down, secularized version from Disney. Honestly, we were surprised that Disney touched it at all, but then again they just distributed it. I don't know what their involvement was, but I don't think that they had much to do with production. Still, kudos to them for taking on such a movie. It's the first Disney movie that we've felt good about in quite awhile (Finding Nemo is up there too, though that's just Disney distribution too...).
The computer animation really helped tell the story. I never found it distracting, which is a rarity these days. They were easily the best animals I've ever seen. It seemed like they intermixed real and CG animals at times, but it was done very well. Best of all, Aslan was perfect! The other movies made him out to be a bit silly (without trying to, of course). This was an incredibly lifelike CG creature on long shots, and a great job (presumably animatronic) on closeups.
The screenwriting/dialog was very well done. At 2.25 hours they didn't need to cut out a huge amount, and every shot was very well done really capturing the scene. I felt that the actors really conveyed the sense of fear, hope, and bravado that were needed. It all meshed so well.
If you don't know the story, it should still be pretty easy to follow, but the books aren't that long. Read them if you haven't! From the title, it seems likely that they'll produce more (IMDB states that the production company has optioned the entire series so we'll see). If any more are produced, we'll be first in line again! (5/5 stars)