Not really, $17.99 on Amazon...
Posted on 12/27/2005 11:28:47 AM PST by Bob J
After reading all the hype in the media and on FR, I was excited to see the film of the CS Lewis book. I have to say I was disappointed. For all it's grandiosity and provenance, I found it clunky, sometimes difficult to follow and worse, unbelieveable (even a "fantasy" movie must reasonable enough in the story and behavior of it's characters to hurdle the initial "willing suspension of disbelief")
The religious basis and backdop to the story has been argued at length on FR, so let's leave that at the doorstep and discuss it's cinematic achievements, or lack thereof.
The Story.
This may have been why I had a problem with the movie. After the presentation of the premise and the characters, I found myslef resisting acceptance that an entire fantasy world filled with magic, mythologic creatures, witches, generals and armies was waiting for a four small children to come and save their world....by prophecy and design. It would have been more believeable if they happened into the world by accident and through clever plot twists were responsible for the salvation of Narnia. But there was nothing really special about these kids, no ancestors with a special connection/knowledge to Narnia, no special abilities, expertise or talents, They were not exceptional in any way...they were just kids. Why did the land of Narnia need them? They added nothing that wasn't already there and in fact detracted from it.
The opening.
The setup took far too long. I wasn't watching my watch but it must have taken over 20-30 minutes for the first kid to walk out the back of the wardrobe closet into the land of Narnia. I didn't understand the emphasis placed on this part of the book as it had little to do with subsequent events. Did it matter that much to the story that the the kids were sent off to the professor because their mother was concerned about the danger of WWII? There was a passing reference later about being shipped off to avoid the effects of war only to be dropped in the middle of the war in Narnia (and whether they should get involved at all), but it fell limply to the ground.
The characters.
Ouch. Let's go by the numbers.
The Professor and his maid (?).
Good cop bad cop. The maid is stern, the professor, kind. So what? The movie feints toward this professor knowing more about Narnia and the wardrobe, but it leaves it there. You think he is going to add some specific knowledge or experience that the kids might benefit from (if not be involved himself) but they movie drops it and he becomes a useless figure in the overall plot. Why waste screen time on it?
Lucy - A typical, precocious, British eight year old. The most likeable character in the movie (which might not be saying much) but I grow weary of the English tendancy to cast their child characters beyond their years. I had three "laugh" moments in this movie, two concerning her. First, when she hits the bullseye with her magic "knife" and then when she "flashes it" and heads off to vanquish the armies of evil. A real laugher.
Susan - The most annoying, negative character in the movie. At first I made parallels to Wendy from "Peter Pan, but you believed Wendy was concerned about the younger children while Susan comes off as a party killing shrew. They needed to soften this character but didn't. Throughout most of the movie I kept wondering when she was going to use those damn arrows...had to wait until the last 2 minutes and by then it was anticlimatic.
Edmund - The anti-hero who becomes hero. I busted out laughing (third instance) when they put he and his brother in those stupid looking suits of armor. We are asked to believe this 10 and 14 year old are going to take part in a "Braveheart" type battle with huge warriors and mythological creatures and vanquish all? I might have believed it if they were given extrahuman strength, speed and agility. Even with their magic "implements" the battle scenes with these two were comical. Think of William Wallace in a sword fight with Doogie Howser.
Peter - Peter is supposed to be the 14 year old hero of the story, protecting his siblings while winding their way through the dangers of a mystical kingdom. The residents of Narnia wait for his arrival to lead their armies of druids and gargoyles againt the forces of evil in a final battle of epic proportions and historic finality. Sorry. Through the first 4/5ths of the movie Peter comes off as an effeminate British girlie boy and it is too much to ask the audience to believe he is the saviour of Narnia. Why would they want or need him?
The Witch - Huh? Tilda Swinson does comes off as an evil bitch but I never did beleive she, or anyone, would want to be the King or Queen of Narnia. It would be like Sauron of Moldor and his legions of Orks waging an epic battle for the control of The Shire. Snooze.
That's my nutshell of a take. If you ave seen narnia and would like to comment, feel free to do so but let's keep it clean.
I agree. That movie stunk. I felt like I needed a degree in the history middle ages to keep up with the nuances in the plot.
The simplest stories are usually the best.
For a terrific film on the WRONG way to do incarnation, see John Candy's Delerious.
Huh?? It's grossed $153,800,000 in the US alone, $229,660,000. Total cost, including production and advertizing was about $211,000. It's paid for itself. Not by much, but it's not going into the red.
IMO that book is by far the best of the series. Lewis' vision of the end of earth was just fantastic.
Wow! that sounds yummy.
Enjoy
To be sure, I meant Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the 3rd book) not Prince Caspian (the 2nd book). I liked TLTW&TW but didn't much care for the rest other than VotDT.
Not really, $17.99 on Amazon...
We are going to see Cheaper 2 on Friday and watched Cheaper 1 again on DVD yesterday - Steve Martin is the best.
**sigh**....more coffee...
Both said it was the worst book ever written, and stand by that feeling today 12 and 16 years later.
And some people don't like a perfectly cooked cheeseburger with fries and a shake, either.
Some things just can't be explained.
Why do people watch so many movies anyway? I think suspending one's disbelief in a theatre is pretty infantile to tell you the truth.
I think you'll like it better than 1. Let me know.
Narnia isn't doing that bad. It has made $163,544,000 , #10 Box Office in 2005 , and has pretty good legs, making $30 million last weekend, its third. Its production budget was $180 million, not $215 M.
It has made 23 times what the homo cowboy movie has done.
I thot it was terrific. And beautiful. And heroic. And well-acted. And true to the books. CS Lewis wasn't quite up to your standards?? haha.
When MacMillan reissued the books in the U.S., back I think in the 80s (with new illustrations by Pauline Baynes), the American publishers changed the order to Narnian chronology instead of the order in which the books were written.
The problem with that approach is that Narnia grew as Lewis produced the books over a period of years, so that when you read The Magician's Nephew, there is much that you will not understand if you haven't read the preceding five books. It comes first in the reordered series, and I think that's a mistake because too much is assumed by the author, who thinks you've already read the others.
I read the whole series when I got the books for Christmas when I was 6 -- a long, long time ago (they had just been published as a set for the first time in the U.S. . . . < eek >) I wish I could read them again for the first time!
I gotta neg on this one - to anyone who read "Cheaper by the Dozen," a very good book btw, the first movie was a lame bastardization. And there's no reason to have made the second one.
A Kerryesque flip flop wouldn't you say/
Lewis himself actually articulated your believability argument better than anyone else I've ever read. But all I can do is paraphrase: it's ok for an imaginary world to have talking animals; they simply must talk as if they would if they really talked; in other words, an imaginary world must be consistent with its own rules.
Which is where you miss it, because you are missing that Narnia is an imaginary children's world, not an imaginary adult's world.
In Braveheart, we wouldn't expect anybody to win a swordfight except by training, because, well, it is still our universe, though a different time.
But in Middle Earth, for example, did you happen to notice that hobbits killed huge goblins with little daggers? That a lady killed a witch-king who had decimated entire armies of male warriors -- because some prophecy or other said "no man" could kill him?
In an imaginary children's world, hobbits and ladies and, yes, boys actually do win swordfights with goblins, because of their courage and their goodness. Unbelievable, you say? then it's been too long since you were a boy.
You missed everything important about every character. Lucy's character was based not on her "cuteness", and not just on her age, but on her goodness. The principle being that those who are good perceive a different world than those who are bad. You notice she always perceived what the others missed: Narnia, the fauns in the fire, the dryad, Aslan leaving the camp, Aslan leaving the world.
The point of Susan's character was not her tendency to kill fun; it was her reductionist logic, which chopped off entire chunks of the cosmos for her.
The point of Peter's character was the question of whether or not he would be willing to take his father's place and take responsibility for the others -- to the point of self-sacrifice. He did do that, of course.
And so on. You missed everything. Only boards in the back of your wardrobe.
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