Review of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) by Shelly B — 03 Aug 2011

This sure as hell redeemed the Narnia series after the disastrous Prince Caspian. The third Narnia movie under the auspices of 20th Century Fox rather than Disney, adapts what may be the most popular of the Narnia novels, and the final one to involve any of the Pevensie children.

And "adapt" is the right word, because the film takes some liberties with the book. The main one of these is a sensible one - a threat is introduced to provide a reason for the children to be there and to provide a more coherent link than the simple ongoing quest to find the missing Lords as per the book.

And underlying both book and film is the story of the redemption of Eustace Scrubb. Will Poulter as Eustace is a triumph - the boy is odious, but very, very human. Skandar Keynes is, unfortunately still underwhelming - I'm afraid I find his overstressed sibilants terribly distracting.

Georgie Henley does better as Lucy although, again, I am possibly out of step with others in not finding her quite as wonderful as everyone else. Ben Barnes seems a little more at ease as King Caspian.

Simon Pegg is a more than adequate voice replacement for Eddie Izzard as Reepicheep. The film looks great, is a nice mixture of action, humour, and spectacle, and is well paced. I have read opinions that the Christian allegory is maybe a little more overt than previously - as an agnostic, the allegory is not exclusively Christian, it seems to me.

The 3D has its moments but is far from essential. Finally, it was wonderful to see the Pauline Baynes illustrations from the novel used as the background for the closing credits.