So, I decided at some point I was going to either read or reread the books from CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. I had read about half of them as a kid and never read the others. As such, I was curious to see how they held up. Anyway, I finished rereading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and figured I should check out the movie version.
Though, for the record, I have no plans to watch the other movies after I finish those books.
In the middle of World War II, the four Pevensie siblings are being shuttled out of London to avoid the Blitz that keeps bombing the city. The large house they’re staying in is the home of one Professor Kirke (Jim Broadbent), a kindly old man whose housekeeper is, well, the opposite of that. One day during a day of hide and seek, youngest sibling Lucy (Georgie Henley) tries to hide in a wardrobe only to find herself in the land of Narnia. She meets a friendly Faun named Mr. Tumnus (James McAvoy), but he has a warning for her: there’s a White Witch (Tilda Swinton) who will not take kindly to humans in Narnia. But then middle brother Edmund (Skandar Keynes) also finds himself in Narnia, but in his case, the Witch finds him and enchants him with some magical candy. She wants him to return with all three of his siblings, including older siblings Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell).
Of course, all four children soon find themselves in Narnia, and the Witch has reason to be desperate: the lion Aslan (voice of Liam Neeson) has also returned, and her powers seem to be fading. Granted, she’s still powerful, and she still has Edmund under her control, and he heard quite a bit from a couple of Beavers (voices of Ray Winstone and Dawn French). The Witch doesn’t quite have the power to match up to Aslan. But she does have a lot of cunning. Can the children and Aslan free Narnia from the Witch?
Now, as far as the books go, having only read two so far, all I will say here is they are light and charming little works, suitable for kids, though yeah, there’s still that Christian subtext I didn’t notice as a kid. As for the movies, there does seem to be an effort to give these characters more personality. That’s probably necessary, but Lewis seemed to do a good job showing that Lucy was something of an innocent, Edmund was a bit of a snot, Peter was the responsible one that rubbed his brother the wrong way, and Susan was the cautious one. That seems to have carried over, but much of that was done with what felt like heavier drama and more intense action sequences. Lewis can write a book where Father Christmas hands out medieval weapons to children, but the actual fight scenes and battles are at most two pages long. Those are more like stuff happening on the side. Here? They’re more front and center, and I don’t much like that this is true.
However, on a side note, it is not uncommon for American movies to cast a British actor as a villain. But this one here may be the first time I have seen an American actor in a largely British cast play a villain as Michael Madsen voices one of the Witch’s top lieutenants in the form of a wolf. That said, even with Swinton playing a witch, a role she can probably pull off in her sleep, this movie didn’t do a lot for me. It lacked a lot of the charm of Lewis’s book and added more drama than I thought was all that necessary. Then again, the movie is a two and a half our adaptation of a 200 page novel written for young children. That was almost to be expected.
Grade: C
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