The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardobe.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

I can remember as a young kid watching the taped version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe that my dad had copied onto tape from TV and enjoying the hell out of it, except the part with Aslan and the stone table.  Without giving it away to those that haven’t seen the movie, or read the books, you know what I mean.  Although I didn’t go into the movie expecting much I came out feeling reasonably impressed.

The story is set during World War 2 when German is bombing the shit out of England.  The kids are shoveled off to the country side to avoid becoming bomb-fodder.  They’re met by a crotchety old house keeper in a horse-drawn cart and are brought to this huge lavish estate.  During a game of hide and seek, the wardrobe is discovered.

From there, you can figure out what happens by reading the damn thing yourself, or at least going to watch a really excellent movie.

Aslan was amazing.  Liam Neeson was kind enough to lend his voice to the production and it was refreshing.  He’s such a good actor.  For a role that you’d expect to hear Sean Connery in, though he just wouldn’t be right for (he’s far too playful), Liam was perfect.  Regal.  Dignified.  Proud.  The perfect lion.

The witch is played by an actress named Tilda Swinton.  I couldn’t help thinking that I really recognized her from somewhere.  She played Gabriel in Constantine.  I had to go and look at IMDb to figure that one out.  For the first half of the movie I couldn’t help but not like her.  She is, after all, the antagonist.  The second half she, oddly enough, was like a cross between Xena and Lara Croft, only blonde and without guns (pun only partially intended).

Technically, this movie was a good one.  For the most part, the effects were jaw-droppingly cool.  After all, who’s to say that the face of a centaur shouldn’t look like it was glued together, or the head fur of a minotaur shouldn’t look like that of a stuffed teddy bear?  Certainly not me.  It appeared that as many of the animals that were real were at least copied from actual footage as they seemed to move properly.  Cheetahs, the Lion, tigers, bears (oh my), wolves, etc. were all magnificent.  There were even some rhinos.  Even beavers.  Some in chainmail (I’m all about beavers in chainmail)

There were piles of mythical creatures that I was fully blown away by as well.  As I mentioned above, minotaurs, centaurs, satyrs, gryphons, drwarves, cyclopes’, giants (really dumb looking ones, I might add.  Very well done).  Hell, even Santa.  Though, I don’t really buy him as an arms dealer (if you’re going to give each of the children a weapon, you have to make them use it in a way that makes sense).

The verdict?  On the now venerable corn-cob scale, 5 being so corny and good and whole some you could probably make popcorn from your… well… nevermind.  And 1 being … well… not corny at all… more like a potatoe… just not good.  I would have to give this movie a very strong 4, quite possibly a 4 and a half.  You just can’t beat a beaver in chain mail.  The only down side really for me was why, at the end of the movie, did she even have a bow?  There was no point?  Her shooting the guy was a bloody afterthought.  Anyway, excellent movie that, according to my girlfriend, remains pretty true to the original story.