Lori and I just got back from seeing Chronicles of Narnia; short review: we enjoyed it much!!
Having read this book (The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe) when I was in 4th grade, my recollection of the story was not as detailed as Lori’s, who reads the entire series to her class every year. She does tell me they did justice to the book and she was satisfied and didn’t miss the little differences, so i’ll take her word. For me, it’s like being exposed to it for the first time. The story is fantastic and taking it in at my age now, I can really appreciate it.
Most of the actors were not big names and others were animated. Some of the dialogue was cheesy at times and it was hard to believe that the kids were nobility, but I guess that’s the beauty of children playing make believe. Despite the lack big name actors, I had little problem getting into the story and was quite touched through out the movie.
I watched a few documentaries and read articles on about the SFX work that went into making the movie. So I was excited I was going to see the fruits of having the largest SFX houses in the world working on the same movie. I found that I spent very little time picking apart the SFX (like I did in the LOTR trilogy). The scenes were beautiful, I liked seeing the mix of live action and CG animals (fake and real wolves, how cool!) and it was interesting to see mythical / humanistic creatures. The talking animals at first were a little hard to swallow but you get over this once you see the majestic Lion, Aslan. Reflecting back on the movie, it’s hard to understand how a CG lion was able to evoke emotion from me, but *he* did! So if this is the benchmark I use to rate the SFX houses they did well!
Overall, It seems to be targeted towards kids and some of the kid acting was a little lame, but I wasn’t disappointed and I enjoyed the story and the character Azlan the most. It’s a good family movie delivering some good messages. I’d recommend you go see it on a big screen and enjoy a good (Disney) movie. It’s really hard to believe Disney had anything to do with this movie, well the two cheesy songs, that must’ve be their input!!