>>REVIEW
CHRONICLES OF NARNIA
STARRING Tilda Swinton, Georgie Henley, Skandar Ketnes and Anna Popplewell
DIRECTED BY Andrew Adamson
Opens Friday, December 9
Check listings
In the barrage of well-cut trailers that have been airing to signal one of the biggest holiday movies of the season – and a hoped-for cinematic franchise, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe looks to be A Lord of the Rings (LOTR) for a younger set.
Based on CS Lewis’s beloved series of books about a quartet of British children who escape into a magical world via a household wardrobe during the Second World War, the film is backed by big money and a literary lineage akin to the cultish following that Tolkien’s books had.
Sadly, this doesn’t amount to much in the hands of director Adam Adamson, who helmed both Shrek and its sequel and makes his disappointing live action debut here. Full of stilted dialogue, uninspired special effects and uneven storytelling, Narnia is all flash and no substance – it dilutes the first book in Lewis’s series to a tired tale of sibling rivalry and a film studio banks on talking animals instead of solid moviemaking to draw kids into theatres.
Beginning in London during the blitzkrieg, the first shots we get of the Pevensie clan are chaotic. As bombs descend on the city the four children are awoken in the middle of the night and scramble to a backyard bunker, until the disagreeable Edmund (Skandar Keynes) makes an unwise decision to scramble back into the house for a framed photo of dad. Thankfully, Edmund is saved, but not without a bit of brotherly animosity revealed in the process.
The children are then shipped off to stay with a family friend outside the city and they’re left to themselves in a massive mansion filled with antiques they’re not to touch. When the youngest, Lucy (Georgie Henley) discovers a magical world through a coat closet, the children wind up travelling to the wintry magical realm only to become embroiled in a battle between good and evil.
Lauded as the foretold saviours of Narnia, these "sons of Adam and daughters of Eve" are thought to be the ones who will fight the evil White Witch (Tilda Swinton) and bring about peace and a return to more temperate weather in the process.
While much has been made of the positioning of Narnia as a Christian film (Walden and Disney, the production companies behind it, marketed the movie expressly to churches and Christian groups), the film has more heavy-handed biblical references than strong "Christian subtext" (the benevolent leader, a lion named Aslan, is a Christ-like figure and there are themes of Biblical temptation personified by Edmund who betrays his siblings for power).
But in Adamson’s hands these points feel less like allegory and more like remnants from the book. Despite some impressive visuals of Narnia, coated in a beautiful bed of white snow, the film devolves into a boring chase full of poorly animated talking beavers and other woodland creatures. Even the always wonderful Tilda Swinton can’t save this dismal affair. As various odd creatures turn up it seems as though Adamson has plucked extras from "LOTR" and "Star Wars."
What Narnia ultimately lacks is the magic that Lewis’s books held – the chilling, magical notion that an entire world existed past the fur coats in an upstairs closet. Here, Narnia doesn’t attain that magic because it looks like a less inspired vision of so many other magical realms we’ve seen of late, whether it’s Middle Earth or Hogwarts. This snowy scene, which exists just beyond an ever-burning lamp post, doesn’t delight but rather smacks of a Hollywood gimmick. Maybe the hope is that, with millions of marketing dollars behind it, no one will notice what’s actually on the screen. Hopefully audiences won’t be so easily tricked. |
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