January 31, 2006

  • Like devotees of "Star Wars", 
    avid readers of C.S. Lewis' children's classics will be so excited that
    the object of their obsession has hit the screen at last that the
    quality of the product will be rendered moot. The book, a tremendous success, ended with these 10 words: "it was only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia." Certainly
    the film makers hope it works out that way.

    Maybe it's the Disney logo that precedes the opening credits, or the
    way the fabulous animals are never quite integrated with the humans,
    but there's a deliberateness, a fastidiousness and a lack of daring and
    vision that marks the entire operation. The humor, what there is, is
    limited to young Lucy (Georgie Henley is wonderful, and the only member
    of the cast who is). Director Andrew Adamson clearly takes enormous
    pleasure in designing centaurs and cyclopes, werewolves and fauns, but
    he captures none of the narrative charm or personality of Lewis' source
    material. Gone is the benevolent old storyteller eager to stimulate our
    imagination, replaced by a personality-devoid treatment that locks
    Lewis' vision to the state of CG circa 2005.

    The problem with "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"
    is this: The closer the many-hands screenplay gets to the Christ-like
    sufferings and resurrection of Lord Aslan, the lion, the more conflicted the filmmakers' efforts become. In Lewis'
    book, the climactic battle of good versus evil - Aslan and his
    followers on one side, the White Witch and her unholy supporters on the
    other - is dispatched in a few sentences. Here it's a full-on,
    major-league blowout, though more numbing than vivid. The scene falls
    hard on the heels of the (pretty painful) passion-of-the-kitty
    humiliations. You may find yourself eyeing the exit long before the
    film's one major unintentional laugh: a wholly gratuitous
    dwarf-killing, via bow and arrow. This project is a slave of duty. You keep waiting to be transported, yet in
    cinematic terms, the transportation never arrives.

    Crying children. Cell phones being passed up and down the aisle.
    Thunderous yawns. This was the "Narnia" experience at a recent
    screening. And while it may have been the ill manners of a particular
    crowd, one suspects that the film is infected with the avian flu of
    ennui. Too much, too nice, too boring. Can't wait for "Narnia Two."

    John Anderson, Michael Phillips and Peter Debruge