Review of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) by Chrisb. — 07 Dec 2005

It's been nearly twenty years since I last read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and I don't remember seeing the Christian symbolism of it back then. Ever since, I had learned more about CS Lewis and how The Chronicles of Narnia very much reflected his philosophy and religion.

Fine. But, man, if I didn't get that impression as a kid reading the book, I sure got it hammered into my skull as an adult watching this movie. At the end of it, I felt like I just came out of the cinematic equivalent of a Creed concert.

(That's bad, by the way.) What amazes me is how this is being marketed as a good Christian alternative to Harry Potter movies. Where the HP films are fully committed to the pure fantasy that their characters and situations inhabit, Narnia slavishly needs to qualify everything that happens on screen with a biblical reference point, reducing the kids into Sunday-schoolbook caricatures.

And having a CG lion as a Christ figure is about as bad as Scott Stapp posing as Jesus on-stage at that aforementioned Creed concert. Other than that, there is some lovely visual adaptation of the cool stuff I do remember from the book.

The kids were capable but uneven in their talents, having cast a blockheaded but handsome Prince William-lookalike as the eldest boy, Peter, while the youngest had an almost creepy precociousness in her performance as Lucy.

Tilda Swinton as the White Witch was fantastic, her styling was incredible, and I would have loved to see her have more screen time rather than the badly rendered animal villains. The CG characters were noticeably weak, and even Azlan seemed much less majestic than the lion my imagination had painted as a child.