Cheap Cds - The Chronicles Of Narnia - The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe [2005]

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Customer Rating:

Summary: What have they done to my magical world ! !
Comment: I grew up having read the famous book, undoubtedly someone would one day try and convey this story
upon the silver screen, it's actually a miracle it took them this long! Where do I start, its
always hard taking someone's else imagination, work, story and moulding it into your own piece but
people have done good jobs of this in the past "Charlie & The Chocolate Factory", "The Lord of the
Rings Trilogy" & "Jurassic Park" to name a few books successfully turned into good movies. />Also with such a entertaining book with detailed characters & good action scenes everything is in
place for a good translation into a movie, unfortunately Andrew Adamson who directs this movie maybe
thinks he can follow in his countrymen's footsteps (Peter Jackson also a famous Kiwi director) and
although he did good with the Shrek Movies, it seems Mr. Adamson's skills lie in the animated movie
industry as this film is diabolical from start to finish.
Most of you will already know the
story and premise of this famous story, 4 young children during World War II are evacuated to the
countryside in rural England, from here the children stumble upon a cupboard in a strange professors
huge house, upon entering the cupboard they arrive into a strange world, NARNIA. Their adventures
in Narnia centre on saving the people from the evil rule of the White Witch who has plunged all of
Narnia into eternal winter, with the help of Aslan the talking Lion they set about freeing
Narnia.
The problem with this movie is it seems VERY, VERY, VERY Rushed, where as LOTR spent
years trying to recapture Tolkiens world of Middle earth, Narnia seems to have taken the blurb you
get on the back of the book and created the film off that! The story is told at a frenetic pace and
at 140 minutes long that's quite a feat, but even if they had made the movie longer and told the
story better with these pathetic child actors in charge little could have been done to save this
film. Peter the eldest and supposedly smartest of the bunch is totally unconvincing and his fight
scenes are almost comedic, Little Lucy is just plain annoying rather then endearing & cute, Susan is
very pompous more so then her character in the book and the one person who has the most material and
characterization to play with fails miserably as a weedy unconvincing troubled young boy, Edmund,
but at least he plays the cowardly part right.
Liam Neeson provides the voice for Aslan and
does his wise old man routine seen so successfully in Star Wars & more recently Batman, Mr. Tumnus
played by James McAvoy from "Shameless" fame does well but the relationship between him & Lucy seems
a bit too false, where as in the book it was well written.
Tilda Swinton plays the White Witch
the "bad guy" so to speak in this movie, and she does ok, but I think anyone could play this
character as she has to look quite monotone & emotionless, almost wooden in her performance to pull
it off, so stick a wig on Keanu Reeves and you'd get the right effect !
The Beavers are by far
the most entertaining characters along with the wolves but don't get nearly enough screen time,
instead we're left looking at Peter holding a sword in an attack position looking like a complete
donut for half the movie.
My biggest gripe with this movie isn't how he hasn't made a good
interpretation of the book, its the poor makeup & costume of some of the characters, the visual
effects are excellent, CGI and all is good, but some of the creatures like the half horse half men,
the Minotaur's (bull heads) and other creatures look like they are straight out of a TV serial that
got cut after the first episode, just imagine watching the making of LOTR and seeing all the Orcs,
Goblins, Uru-Kai's, Dwarfs & Elves masks made up by the crew that went horribly wrong and were
thrown into the scrap heap, its almost like the Narnia crew snuck into this scrap heap and took what
they could !

If you enjoyed the books, save yourself the torture, and read it again, or
watch the old cartoon or old BBC TV series, this is so bad how Disney hopes to have started off a
Lord of The Rings or Star Wars legacy is beyond me, this is more the start of something like Police
Academy then anything else!

Customer Rating:

Summary: excellent!! worth your time
Comment: Although I haven't read the book, I thought the film was excellent. The CGI is utterly amazing some
of the best I've seen, great film, suitable for the whole family young and old. The only reason it
didn't get 5 stars was its a bit slow to get started, but what film isn't???

Customer Rating:

Summary: A terrible waste
Comment: This film was quite a terrible rendition of the book. Aslan was a rather poor CGI animation, lacking
any of the majesty that the books describe. The only decent child was Edmund, who actually fitted
the books in both character and looks, whereas the other 3 children did not portray their characters
with any conviction and also failed to represent their literary counterparts accurately. The film
dragged on for what seemed like hours which was totally unnecessary as the book is fairly short.

There were also added scenes which were also unnecessary and detracted from the original's
story - the river of ice being a prime example.
As a film, this was a very dry, drab thing to
watch which got tedious very quickly. As a book to film conversion, it was tragic - yet another
director failing to keep faith with the original by adding and subtracting silly scenes. This should
certainly be one of the easiest books to convert to film, especially with today's technology, but it
has been severely violated here.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Bad to the power 10
Comment: If you have read the books, or even have daydreams about those quaint series on a sunday afternoon
on BBC, avoid this. It destroys the whole integrity of a wonderful book, and fails in the intent of
Lewis.
The acting is the truly bad thing. Im not sure if they are english actors, or americans
faking accents, but they are so woefully wooden, especially Susan and Edmund (and Peter, and Lucy,
hang on and.....). Aslan fails to draw out any sympathy during the stone table scene, and only one
thespian comes out with any credit, that is the woman who played the White Witch.
Of course,
this is Disney, expect the token american in an English book (can I hear turning in a certain
grave). The climax battle at the end is spectacular, but still fails to evoke any interest in the
film. This film fails at very basic levels and for that the director has to take the blame. But hey,
what do I know? Some of the previous reviewers enjoyed it, perhaps you will to.

Customer Rating:

Summary: One of the best I've seen
Comment: Having read the book as a child I was a little worried that the film would not be anything like the
book - how wrong I was. I was immediately drawn into the story and at 39 years of age, I cried as
much at the sacrifice scene as when I was 9. Yep - I enjoyed the film, yep - I am reading the books
again and yep - the DVD is in my collection.

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