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December 13, 2005

[review - the chronicles of narnia] ^{12:50 AM}

Alas, the new laptop does not have Photoshop, so a proper word balloon review will have to wait. For now:

Never has one fantasy film ever made me appreciate Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings more than The Chronicles of Yawnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

It's not that I hated the movie, I didn't, and it's not that I found it overtly preachy (which is surprisingly a dialogue problem, and not a story problem) - it's that everyone is so two-dimensional and one-note. Everyone. The only person I remotely cared about was Peter, and that's simply because I liked his hair. Seriously.

Somehow, through childhood I mananged to not only avoid the CS Lewis source novels, but also the animated feature of the first book. Yet still, I knew everything that was coming. The best use of archetypes are when they're bent on their ear, not when they're simply fulfilling roles. While little Georgie Henley as Lucy is a find, her character is not. In fact the movie only has two real characters in it, played by Ray Winstone and Dawn French, and they're talking beavers.

The initial Lucy/Tumnus scenes kinda gave me the creeps, as if I was watching Faun & Order: SVU or CSI: Narnia.

As Constantine foretold, Tilda Swinton does not disappoint when she's given little on the page and someone to hate. But when you expect her to be amazing and she delivers, it's hard to feel much about the White Witch other than "my, doesn't she look like she's having fun?"

The movie feels like an imposter. A simple tale parading around as an epic that lacks heart. Please don't think I'm harping on the obvious Christian allegory, because trust me, when someone really hits those out of the park I'm be the first to appreciate it (see: Prince of Egypt), but this was just ... lacking.

Lately I've been dividing up movies into "in theater" movies and "home theater" movies. If you have a good home theatre, I think King Kong will probably work best there, but when it comes to Narnia, take your pick. I don't think it matters where you see it, because it may soon find itself shelved in the back of your mind.

It's a story for kids. A beloved one, but it feels like much more of a kids' book than HP or LOTR.

I avoided the books when I was younger, and only tried to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when I heard about this movie in production. I couldn't read them. I wasn't disappointed in the movie, but I walked out of the theater with the same feeling I had when I put down the book: Interesting, but not much story there. Tolkien famously hated C.S. Lewis' books, so I shouldn't be surprised.

Posted by: John at December 13, 2005 9:36 AM

"its a story for kids" shouldn't be a defense or a crutch - quite a few of my favorite things in life are "for kids." Hell, sometimes I get sucked into BEAR IN THE BIG BLUE HOUSE on playhouse disney and it's PRE-SCHOOL show.

If they could, apparently, string out a 20 minute battle from a few pages of a book, surely they could've used their magic lense to find the depth elsewhere in the pages.

Posted by: kyle at December 13, 2005 11:20 AM

I think part of the limpness is because they adapted the book a little too faithfully. The characters' single-notedness fit the roles demanded of them in fifty-year-old simply-written children's literature, but translated to the screen, the dialogue does fall flat. I've been rereading the book because it's been at least ten years and I am a little disturbed to see how little they did to change not just the plot but the written dialogue.

That being said, I enjoyed the movie nonetheless, but whenever Tilda shows up in furry tribal war gear and freaky makeup to anything I'm set.

I thought it was funny how much ado was made about the Christian allegory when the Aslan resurrection scene is literally ten seconds long.

Posted by: sleepy kev at December 13, 2005 12:28 PM

and on another note, am i the only one who was seriously rooting for Tilda to kill those fucking kids?

also, was anyone else a little freaked out by Aslan eating Tilda's face off in the end? i feel like talking lions should tear people apart with their claws rather than eat at them with their teeth. but he did manage to devour her without getting so much as a drop of blood on his fur.

Posted by: andrew at December 13, 2005 2:50 PM

Well it is funny, C.S Lewis and Tolkien were good friends and actually had a draw to see who would write a mythology and who would write time travel. It is true that Tolkien really hates allagory though, most of his opening in the lotr books talks about how lotr is not an allagory.

As for the Narnia movie I agree that there was something missing, and my friends and I were constantly making jokes at the Tumnus/lucy scenes ^^;

Posted by: river at December 23, 2005 2:49 PM

December 13, 2005

[review - the chronicles of narnia] 12:50 AM

[review - the chronicles of narnia] ^{12:50 AM}