The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

It's been years since I had seen the 1988 rendition of the Narnia story, and to be honest, I never liked it. I also never read the books, so I had no love for the series. This is why, until today, I had never seen The Chronicles of Narnia. I know the series was quite successful, so I figured I'd give it a shot before I wrote the whole thing off completely. I'm pretty sure I remember my boss at work saying how great this movie was though. Due to that I did go into the movie expecting it to be well above average. Hit the jump to see if that turned out to be true or false.


I'm pretty sure most people know the story of Narnia, so for the few who don't I'm going to keep this brief. Shouldn't be hard to do. The land of Narnia has been in the grip of winter for years. The evil and icy White Witch is the cause since she took over the land. There is a prophesy however stating that she will be defeated by 4 humans. As chance has it, our main characters are 4 children who find a way into Narnia through a magical wardrobe. As it looks like they fit the prophesy, both sides, good and evil, prepare for an epic fantasy battle between men, myths, and beasts alike.

A friendly fawn in the beautiful winter forest

As I said, I kind of expected this to be on the side of amazing. What I found was just short of that. While the CG was good, it was still pretty obvious what was CG and what wasn't. It was especially distracting when a character, like the fawn, was half CG and half real. Also, some characters or creatures were better rendered than others. This means it really felt like the quality had definite peaks and valleys. Aslan the lion was pretty great, as were the beavers, but the wolves weren't, and in certain scenes, there were some bad looking evil creatures. And not "bad" in a good way. One interesting note, most of the evil creatures seemed to be practical effects which worked far better and looked much creepier.

On the same note of ups and downs, I'd like to mention the acting, both live action, and voice acting. Aslan the lion is voiced by Liam Neeson. While Neeson is awesome, I just couldn't link his voice to the lion in my mind. They just didn't fit together for me, and I could only see Liam Neeson whenever he spoke. Also, Tilda Swinton, the White Witch, was great. I feel like I've seen her in a ton of things, but it's probably just Burn After Reading and Adaptation which I saw her in both not long ago. I also thought she looked more and more cool (pardon the pun) as the movie when on. Her look in the final battle is great! On the down side would be all the kids. They came across as a range from "just barely good" to "this is so bad I don't believe them at all".  I felt it was particularly bad in any of the emotional scenes when we're supposed to feel sad with the kids. I guess I just wasn't able to connect to any of the characters when I really think about it.

Not the greatest picture I could find, but the "Ice Queen" looks badass in the final fight!

The one thing that did save this film in the end though, after everything I've just complained about, was that the huge battle at the end was indeed huge, and also very satisfying. Lots of creatures and lots of monsters all killing and biting and swinging swords at each other. There was so much going on all around the screen that you could probably watch it several times and see something different every time.

So there you have it. A bit of a mixed bag, but overall I enjoyed the movie. It was a little unfortunate that I had higher expectations than what I ultimately felt, so it does seem like a bit of a disappointment, but not so much that I won't see the next Narnia movie, Prince Caspian. I suspect as the movies become more current, the CG should improve as well, which is always a bonus. I'd say give this movie a rent, it was entertaining if nothing else.