Inside the most magical wardrobe
Is there anything more exciting for a bored child than to discover a portal that opens into a magical world of fairies and fauns, where a majestic lion battles a bad witch? That's the premise of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Walt Disney Picture's version of the first book in Lewis' seven-volume, allusion-rich, and allegorical exploration of Christian theology.
During the London Blitz, four English children (The Pevensie children, ages 12 to 17) are evacuated to the country, into the care of an eccentric old professor. Soon, the children stumble upon a wardrobe in an unused room. Like Alice in Wonderland, the wardrobe is the portal to another world. Once they cross the threshold, they go into a magical world.
As the Pevensie kids enter Narnia, they have to face some unexpected truths. Jadis the bad-tempered, cold-hearted evil White Queen (Tilda Swinton), holds all of Narnia in her frozen grip.
Their sudden, but expected arrival triggers a call to war. And the lion king messiah Aslan returns to lead the way. Edmund Pevensie (Skandar Keenness), older brother Peter (William Moseley), sister Susan (Anna Popplewell), and, the youngest, Lucy (Georgie Henley), will have to face great challenges as they fight alongside Aslan to return Narnia to the glorious kingdom it used to be.
As fantasy films go, Narnia tells a relatively easy-to-follow story, clearly designed for a younger audience than The Lord of the Rings. The typical core family values theme of the Disney movies mixes its brand of Christian family values with popular English sentiment.
Despite comparisons to The Lord of the Rings, Narnia has more in common with both The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan, since all three stories involve children who escape day-to-day pessimism to experience wild adventures.
High-tech special effects enable the filmmakers to breath life into exotic and beautiful creatures of myth and fantasy. Fauns with the legs of goats, half-human and half-horse centaurs, and a magnificent lion that talks and leads an army of gnomes, fairies, beavers, hawks, and foxes are some of the visual marvels this movie offers us.
Director Andrew Adamson (Shrek) makes an impressive live-action debut, getting engrossing performances from his young cast and grafting a nice world of special effects, giving The Chronicles of Narnia an impressive start as another family classic of myth and fable on the big screen.Read full review
