Review of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) by Joe W — 05 Apr 2013

After Disney gave up on the franchise, I was sad because the books are one of my favorite series. But I immediately perked up when I found out Twentieth Century Fox would pick up the reigns and bring us the third installment. And I'm quite glad they did.

The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader starts with the two youngest Pevensie children staying over their Aunt and Uncle's house while their parents and Susan are in America, and Peter is studying at Professor Kirk's mansion. Edmund and Lucy were "too young" to go to America so now they're stuck spending time with their annoying cousin Eustace. After a couple minutes of getting to know how Eustace only believes in facts and what he can see and explain, the three children get washed into Narnia(please forgive that horrible pun, but I just couldn't resist).

The film follows the book pretty closely but, of course, there are a number of discrepancies. A new plot point of "the evil" is introduced, but it does not take away from the story to an extreme amount. At least it adds a monster scene that was fantastically exciting. The new plot point, however, can seem a little silly, and the CG used for the green fog is jarring, at times.

The performances were good. Georgie Henley was fantastic. She will have a good career, but she just needs to get bigger roles now to show everyone that she is truly talented. Will Poulter (Eustace Scrubb in the film) plays his character annoyingly, but appropriately because we have to be annoyed by his persistence of sticking to facts and ruining all the fun of the voyage.....and being annoying. But after he accepts Narnia, and grows to like it, he becomes the most heartfelt character in the film.

And I have to praise an animated characters performance; I just have to because Reepicheep is the cutest, honorable, and most lovable CG mouse ever. He grew on me so much in Prince Caspian and seeing the end of the movie (No Spoiler) I nearly cried.

The ending was so......Let's just say I'm surprised I did not cry. And there were MANY people at the theater crying at the end, including my cousin who isn't a Narnia avid..in fact she's only seen bits of the first one. Basically, if you did not feel something at the end or don't feel something, then you really planned on hating the movie when you first walked in.

The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader is a delight. The religious themes are in fact stronger here, but it isn't the film's fault. The source material was written that way, and if you have a problem with that....then what are you doing in the theater at all? There's no escaping the religious themes in the Narnia stories, so it would be best to avoid them.