[.ca] Chronicles of Narnia: The LionWitch and the Wardrobe ...

From Amazon.com:
In a misty London train station, four siblings await their journey to the country, a place to avoid the bombs of World War II, a place where one boy imagines nothing ever happens. As it turns out, the old professor's spooky country house is ripe for exploration. Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter's adventures begin when the back wall of a fur-coat filled wardrobe opens up into the magical world of Narnia, where, because of the malevolent White Witch's spell, it is "always winter and never Christmas." Before long, the children (the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve) are participating in an epic, allegorically Christian battle between good (Aslan the lion) and evil (as represented by the diabolical White Witch, played with wonderfully hideous zeal by Barbara Kellerman). The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, first published in 1950 and designed to be the second book chronologically in the Narnia series, was faithfully, painstakingly adapted into a BBC TV series, and then edited into a feature-length film in 1988. The snowy landscapes of Narnia are lovely, but youngsters accustomed to stunning silver-screen special effects may pooh-pooh this rather slow-moving, homespun production, with humans dressed like beavers, a large stuffed-animal-looking lion, and oddly patched-in Disneyesque animated winged creatures. Still, there's an arresting sweetness and simplicity to this fantasy adventure in two episodes (59 minutes and 110 minutes) that suit this old-fashioned, well-loved classic to a T. --Karin Snelson

not very good:
this movie wasn't even interesting, it is just a waist of money!

The Lion, the Witch, and the BBC:
In the December, C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" will follow in the footsteps of Lewis' pal Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings Trilogy," with a gleaming new big-screen adaptation. In the months before it's released, however, it might be time to dust off the 1988 BBC adaptation of Lewis's first book, which is divided between the good and bad. The four Pevensie children arrive in the country, at the start of World War II. Despite the eccentric but friendly professor (Michael Aldridge) who lives there, they're all bored. And during a game of hide-and-seek, Lucy (Sophie Wilcox) slips into an old wardrobe -- and finds that the back of it opens into a magical, snowy forest land called Narnia. She encounters a friendly faun, but when she arrives back home, she finds that none of her siblings believe her. But soon Lucy and her siblings find their way through -- not knowing that peevish Edmund (Jonathan R. Scott) has already allied himself to the evil White Witch (Barbara Kellerman) who keeps Narnia locked in winter. She's especially desperate, because Narnia is beginning to thaw out, now that leonine Aslan is coming back to it, and the Pevensie kids have shown up to fulfil an old prophecy. But the Witch won't go down without a massive battle -- and one that might destroy the lion-messiah himself. "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" is a mixed bag -- it has more or less equal measures of good and bad. What it also has is deep fidelity to Lewis's original book, which was one of the first major fantasies to get widespread attention. And that's definitely an important detail, since the spirit of the book could easily have been lost. The filmmakers obviously did their homework, crafting the script and dialogue to be close to Lewis's novel. And it's a credit that they pulled off some lines that could have sounded idiotic ("You're not dead, Aslan!" "Do I look dead?") in the wrong hands. They also did an excellent job of changing atmosphere, shifting from the stodgy English country house to the airy frozen Narnia, with its castles and dewy wildlands. Unfortunately, the special effects haven't aged well. They were state of the art at the time, but now they look quite cheesy and low budget, with a few exceptions -- the scene where Lucy restores various "statued" people to life is pretty good. The other stuff ranged from primitive bluescreen to an enormous puppet playing Aslan. It's a good puppet, and remarkably convincing physically, but it still makes Aslan look like he has a wicked case of arthritis. The acting is also divided between good and bad. Scott is particularly good as the "bad boy" Edmund, who ends up falling in with the Witch, especially when he turns on his evil mentor. He is accompanied by some good acting from Sophie Cook as Susan, and Richatd Dempsey as Peter, who also has to do a convincing battle with a werewolf. The weak links are Wilcox, who speaks most of her lines in a whine, and Kellerman, who laughs madly, coos and shrieks, and generally hams it up like a lunatic. The new version of "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" has yet to be judged against Lewis' original novel, but the 1988 BBC version is a solid if flawed adaptation. Worth checking out.

Immerse your child and yourself in Narnia:
Excellent video production by people who love and respect C.S. Lewis and his Narnia Chronicles. My son likes this particular story of the series the best (so far) and after reading it, we watched this show. The book was enhanced by it, not diminished. Wonderful sets, actors and dialogue. It may be a bit intense with the White Witch scenes as the actress plays it to the hilt, but either holding hands or the fast forward button soon remedies the few minutes of nasty old witch harmless. The Brits know how to make the ultimate Narnia show. Get the DVD if you can.

Great to see, but could have been better.:
I love the books, and think of them as some of the best literature ever written. I enjoyed watching the animated movie as a kid, but longed for something that was more real- namely, live action. And in an age when Harry Potter is big, and The Lord of the Rings has been updated into live action from it's original animation, why not also Narnia? And here it is. It kept very close to the book, which was helpful. And it is overwhelmingly British- which is just right, since Lewis was British and wrote about British children. This is a production that needed to be done in England to do it right. The acting is certainly superior to anything you see in Harry Potter, thank God- these children can actually act, and emote. But as many have pointed out, the special effects really drag the movie down. It's a bit odd, as the movie obviously has the money for location shooting that put it above a high-school project. But every little while through the movie, you see bits that look like high-schoolers plugged sequences in. The beavers look like people in costumes, with make-up. There's no attempt to hide that they are people. The wolf transforms (very sloppily) from a dog into a guy in a wolf costume, who doesn't look scary as much as humorous. A bit of Babe or Animal Farm (live-action version) technology, with talking animals, would have done well here, and not have been that hard to do. And the painted mythological creatures are really badly done. A computer would have touched this up very easily, very cheaply, to make the special effects realistic- or even some costumes for mythological creatures. The telling point is a final fight scene between Peter and a wolf, in which the background suddenly changes, inexplicably, into a set for a play, throughout the entire fight. It was then that I realized that this would make an excellent play. There was nothing wrong with the acting, or costumes, or sets, were this a play. It just doesn't measure up to what we have come to expect from movies or even TV.

Bad Beginning....:
This no-budget production from the BBC fails to live up to the production values of films made 100 years ago. Shoddy production design offers us absurd anthropromorphic animals of the stage-horse variety. The problem is not the budget - I offer the example of John Coates's "The Snowman", which opens with a simple shot of a man entering a wintry wood overlaid with a voiceover, all you need to create an atmosphere of impending enchantment. Instead, the producers foolishly try to emulate Hollywood-style visual effects on a shoestring budget. The results are depressing. The truth is, even with a huge budget, no one involved with the design and execution of this telefilm would be capable of creating a memorable visual. The 4 children playing the leads are chubby and indolent looking. They consistently seem to be blissfully unaware of the fact that they are being filmed - were they chosen randomly from the nearest grade school? Aslan is a lifeless animatronic head which rasps out his lines via poorly synched voice over. However, the first 30 minutes or so are wonderful, the minimally made up Mr. Tumnus the clear highlight. The score is very good, from the same composer who scored the deservedly praised BBC "Brideshead Revisited". The text of the telefilm is also very accurate to the text and Christian religious themes of the novel by CS Lewis. This series gets better with each outing though: "Prince Caspian" ekes its head a little beyond its predecessor, "Dawn Treader" surpasses both by leaps and bounds and finally "The Silver Chair" carries itself with considerable aplomb and charm, despite some very poor designs and effects. Overall, a decent warm up for the curious before the real thing hits cinemas Christmas 2005.