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Review:
 Sometime
during the late 1960s, someone in the Disney studios began kicking
themselves. They had bought the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's “The
Hobbit” when the book first came out in 1939 and almost turned it
into part of a film during the second world war before forgetting
about it and letting the rights lapse.
Soon after, the for-grownups sequel, “Lord of the Rings” became a
massive hit. So Disney got the rights to the first couple of books
of the “Pyrdain” series and the result turned out to be famously
horrid [“The Black Cauldron” wasn't THAT bad, though], and then
forgot about high fantasy. Years passed. New Line got the rights
to LoTR for Peter Jackson and he and New Line made a fortune.
Disney just HAD to have a response. So, they got the rights to
Tolkien's old drinking buddy C. S. Lewis' “beloved” Middle Earth
imitation, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” which had a decent
reputation in and of itself.
The third version of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” was to
get the full treatment, a project sooooo expensive, it might break
the studio, a gamble that seems to have paid off.
Back in 1959, C. S. Lewis opposed a live-action version of the
Narnia series because "anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of
narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or
nightmare," and added that he would find a "human, pantomime"
version of Aslan the lion to be "blasphemy". Indeed he was right,
as state-the-arts special effects back then wouldn't have been
nearly good enough.
But, as Peter O'Toole said about another film entirely,
“Technology has finally caught up with the imagination” and
Computer Graphic Imagery (CGI) circa 2005 can actually make you
think a beaver can not only talk, but act.
The real problem with the film is what Lewis put on the page.
Lucy(Georgie Henley), Peter (William Moseley), Edmund(Skandar
Keynes) and Susan Pevensie's (Anna Popplewell) journey into a
magical world of Christian allegorical propaganda is actually
rather clunky at times.
The filmmakers actually knew this, beginning the film in London,
which was being bombed by the Nazis. We see Momma Pevensie(Judy
McIntosh) grabbing the kids and getting them into the bomb
shelter. This is something that Lewis scrupulously avoided doing,
because he generally held the never-to-be-seen parents with a bit
of contempt, but here, it is necessary and good, because it
introduces us to kids in a way that shows their “pre-conversion”
selves in a somewhat positive light.
The pre-Narnia part of the film is actually far more fleshed-out
than it is in the book, and takes up almost half the film. The
mysterious professor(Jim Broadbent) sweet and his imperious
housekeeper Mrs. Macready(Elizabeth Hawthorne) is a typical kiddy
book caricature, Once Lucy gets into the wardrobe and meets Mr.
Tumnus the faurn(James McAvoy), things begin to pick up
considerably. Lewis had little tolerence for little kids, and in
this case it works, for Edmond is a little jerk and his falling
under the spell of Jadis, the White Witch(Tilda Swinton) is
actually one of the more natural things in the film. This is
allegory after all, and the basics of Christian theology need
someone to be redeemed of sin by the Jesu…Aslan(voice of Liam
Neeson) who isn't as annoying here as he is in the book.
When the film sticks to the action sequences, it soars. When it
doesn't, like
when Father Christmas(James Cosmo) shows up to give the kids their
secret weapons, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Same thing with
the mentions of tinned sardines and such, and Narnia is only
really consistent here.
Still, as a “Lord of the Rings” clone, it succeeds admirably, but
one worries about the inevitable sequels, which may be a bit
clunkier.
Eric Lurio
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