Posted on 12/09/2005 2:58:02 PM PST by ikka
Narnia came out this Friday. Why not post a review or mini-review after you have seen it?
Why not? Because I don't see a film based on other's opinion of it. See tagline below.
We all know how culturally superior you are now. Move along.
I walked in late and left when Aslan turned out to be a gay cowboy. Maybe I was in the wrong theater.
bump - will see it next week.
I told my grandkids I'd take them, but my wife is concerned the lion is too scary. I think my 10 year old grandson is fine. But I'm worried about our 8 year old granddaughter- she understands the Christian imagery, and has read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but she is a scaredy cat. She's itching to see it, so what do you think?
It's the movie for the season, I think. Makes all the Christmas lights seem brighter, the faces going to and fro on Holyday shopping, seem so much dearer.
We all applauded the bad guys losing, and the good guys winning!
I saw it this afternoon and agree that the actors portraying the sons and daughters of Adam were wonderful (by the way i was amused at the beginning of the film when they showed the director's name, which i hadn't known of beforehand...i had seen his name in one of the reviews that i was skimming through last night but thought the reviewer was referencing Peter or Edmund, who i imagined had been given the nickname Adamson by someone in Narnia...lol).
All in all, keeping in mind that it's based on a children's book, i thought it was well done and in fact in some ways i liked it better than the book. The audience seemed to enjoy it too as many were clapping at the end.
*SPOILERS FOLLOW*
I did have a few quibbles with the movie however. For one, although a lot of humor worked well most of the time i thought some of it seemed forced and used in instances that seemed inappropriate (such as when Beaver husband was bravely risking his life by walking across an ice-covered river which was breaking under his weight and Beaver wife joked that he had perhaps been overeating of late).
Another thing is that when the kids broke the window and fled into the wardrobe in order to escape the wrath of the housekeeper, it just struck me as out of character for the two older kids to run away and hide like that instead of facing up to whatever punishment was in store. Besides, what good would it have done? They were the only kids around who could have broken the window and so hiding would only have delayed their inevitable punishment for a little while. Anyway i'm pretty sure the book handled it differently but since i can't quite remember how Lewis did it i can't say his version would have been better.
Perhaps the major quibble i had though was with Father Christmas showing up - now this was something which was in fact in the book but i always felt it was a weak part of the story. I can't quite explain why it rings so false to me. Perhaps it is the mingling of one fantasy (Santa Claus) with another (the land of Narnia). Or maybe it is because Lewis went out of his way to allegorize Christ with Aslan, a lion, but for St. Nick he just used St. Nick. Or maybe because it makes you pause and wonder why they even celebrate Christmas in Narnia in the first place? I mean, isn't Aslan their version of Christ? But then since they know who Adam was i guess it makes sense that they would know of Christ too but still, it just seems to muddle things up a bit by throwing Santa in there and it took me out of the "reality" of the movie for a few minutes, so to speak.
Putting those quibbles aside it was an enjoyable movie and one made even more so by some great casting. While the special effects and the battles scenes were all excellent, to me it was the human actors that stole the show. Lucy was adorable and had a very infectious smile. Edmund was a likeable brat. Emily was played just right and so was Peter. And the way they genuinely cared for each other, without being too mawkish about it, was the aspect of the movie that i think i liked most (and related to that, the lesson of forgiveness as they were able to forgive Edmund for what he had done).
Finally, just wanted to say that i'm definitely looking forward to seeing more Narnia movies; especially The Boy and His Horse (i think that's the name of it) and Prince Caspian, which i thought were better stories.
We loved LOTR and nitpicked those movies to death after seeing them. Our only complaint after Narnia was there was nothing to nitpick. They really pulled it off near perfect. Dittoes on the warm fuzzies. Our nine year old was fine with it, having read the book this summer.
Go figure a guy named humbug is pissed off at Narnia for including Father Christmas. Ha!
Is Liam Neeson in everything ? - talk about market saturation
i LOVED it! it was WONDERFUL, in its own right. the children are wonderful too. i absolutely loved it and hope they make all the books...honestly, it was beautiful! LOVED IT!
the lion isn't too scary. i don't even think the battle scenes are bad. i thought the lion could have been scarier, but they tried to keep it from scaring children.
i pretty much disagree with all your nitpicking...particularly the humor. i thought the beavers were wonderful and the humor was a delightful surprise. of course, the books are humerous, but i didn't think they could catch that in the movie. but they did!
I thought that the special effects were good, but I thought that they needed to develop the Peter character more before letting him lead the battle with the Winter Witch.
There have been too many well directed battle scenes in movies recently to let this one flounder the way it did.
lol, i forgot about my name here (been a while since i've posted) and the implications it could have with my post
oh no don't get me wrong, i liked the Beavers too and chuckled at much of the humor throughout the film...just that some of it i thought was overused, or rather, was used in situations where humor didn't really seem to fit (such as when trying to escape from wolves or about to fall into frigid waters)
but then again, maybe i really am a humbug ;)
Just came back. Took my 8 year old daughter, 15 year old son, 18 year old daughter (yes, it is quite a spread) and wife (haven't taken the entire family to the movies in a long time). My 8 year old is a bit of a scaredy cat as well and jumped and cried a few times, but the overall message insured she left the theater with a smile on her face.
Everyone in the family enjoyed it. It was worth the price of admission.
1. If the world seems a bit calmer tonight it is because Walt Disney has, at least for the moment, stopped spinning in his grave. I seriously think this is the first movie in a very long time to be associated with the Disney name, which Uncle Walt would not only have approved of, but would have been extremely proud of.
2. It struck me at the end of this movie that I could not remember the last time I attended a flick which had the audience applauding at the end.
3. As stated elsewhere on this thread, the battle scenes may not be as choreographed as dramatically as some more recent productions, but the cineophiles will definately recognize the tip of the hat that the opening scenes of the battle pay to the 1970 movie, Waterloo.
4. Liam Neeson makes a decent Aslan. I can think of a select few whose voices may have been better...Connery, Patrick Stewart. Somehow a British Isles accent seems right since Lewis was English, and the lion symbol is so strongly identified with the British Empire and throughout English heraldry. Had Aslan been a Grizzly bear, an American accent would have been the way to go (Jacka Palance or Eastwood). I hated Roger Moore as James Bond, but his accent and voice do have a sophistication and dignity which may have been optimum for Aslan.
5. The first time I saw the trailer for this pic, I was stunned at how closely the images on the screen mirrored the images that had been formed in my mind's eye during my readings of TLTWATW. When those images started popping up on the screen, I relly felt like someone had been inside my skull. On reflection, I think it merely speaks to the power and discipline of the imagery in Lewis's writing and his ability to make his readers envision things exactly how he wants them to be imagined.
6. The special effects are a technical tour de force and yet, are skillfully incorporated to support and augment the telling of the story rather than overwhelming or becoming the story, a problem I've seen with many recent movies.
7. On first day at the Professor's house in the country, the Pevansie children are housebound due to heavy rains, which eventually prompts them to play hide and seek. The opening shot of this scene is of rain falling against a window while in the background, a radio broadcasts the latest war news, reporting German bomber strikes. The voice of the radio announcer is Doug Gresham, step-son of CS Lewis and co-producer of the movie.
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