Chronicles of Narnia – The Movie
ChinchillaBoy and I went to see this movie last weekend. CB really wanted to see it, because he had just finished re-reading the book and “wanted to see how they screwed it up”.
As always, a joint review.
CB: If you want to see a good movie, DON’T SEE THIS ONE! Words do not express how boring the movie was. It felt like I was watching a documentary about corn. All they did was just take a book, get a bunch of actors, add in a lot of computer animation, and call it a movie. They shoved in a bunch of lies that didn’t take place in the book. It’s a huge disappointment to Narnia fans like myself. In other words; don’t see the movie. I was bored out of my mind from the second it started. Wait…there was one good part, the credits and walking out of that dumb movie. At least they tried…a little.
Goldie: You can probably tell how much fun it was sitting next to ChinchillaBoy in the theater! I think his mistake was that he just went in there expecting too much. As for me, I never expect too much from a movie version of a book, so I was quite satisfied. The movie is very close to the book; a few of the actors are really good (I liked Tilda Swinton as the White Witch, James McAvoy as Mr. Tumnus, Skandar Keynes as Edmund, and of course the irresistible Georgie Henley as Lucy); the animation is awesome; the fauns, centaurs and other semi-human creatures are extremely life-like. What more could a girl want? I walked out of the theater thinking that I had just seen a good movie. Then ChinchillaBoy started ranting and couldn’t stop all the way home. As I was listening to him, I realized that, on the whole, it wasn’t really a life-changing experience. In fact, I don’t even want to see the movie again. It’s too lukewarm, too spineless, too bland, too nicey-nice. It isn’t really bad, but it isn’t good, either. It is average. And, after waiting for two years, you want to see more than an average movie.
In one of the reviews we have seen, it says that the producers went after two audiences at once – the fantasy fans (lovingly referred to as "the Harry Potter crowd") and the evangelical community. Apparently, the movie was an attempt to please them both. Sadly, it didn’t work out very well.
That said, there are parts and pieces of LWW that I would definitely like to see again. The battle, for example, was out of this world. I also enjoyed following the story of Edmund. In the book, he is a mean kid who is being mean for no reason at all, and then makes a full 180 and becomes good. Kinda like what would happen if your school bully became a born-again believer… oh wait, I think I know how that works in real life. Whereas in the movie Edmund is this misunderstood preteen who lives in his own world and gets a lot of flak from everybody simply for being himself. He reminded me of LilProgrammer. He even looks like LilProgrammer did when he was that age. Needless to say, I found both the movie Edmund and his conversion more realistic than the book version.
The theater was quite empty; there was no applause after the movie; everyone just got out of there as quickly as possible. I probably won’t watch this movie again when it comes out on DVD, because my kids will kill me if I try.
As always, a joint review.
CB: If you want to see a good movie, DON’T SEE THIS ONE! Words do not express how boring the movie was. It felt like I was watching a documentary about corn. All they did was just take a book, get a bunch of actors, add in a lot of computer animation, and call it a movie. They shoved in a bunch of lies that didn’t take place in the book. It’s a huge disappointment to Narnia fans like myself. In other words; don’t see the movie. I was bored out of my mind from the second it started. Wait…there was one good part, the credits and walking out of that dumb movie. At least they tried…a little.
Goldie: You can probably tell how much fun it was sitting next to ChinchillaBoy in the theater! I think his mistake was that he just went in there expecting too much. As for me, I never expect too much from a movie version of a book, so I was quite satisfied. The movie is very close to the book; a few of the actors are really good (I liked Tilda Swinton as the White Witch, James McAvoy as Mr. Tumnus, Skandar Keynes as Edmund, and of course the irresistible Georgie Henley as Lucy); the animation is awesome; the fauns, centaurs and other semi-human creatures are extremely life-like. What more could a girl want? I walked out of the theater thinking that I had just seen a good movie. Then ChinchillaBoy started ranting and couldn’t stop all the way home. As I was listening to him, I realized that, on the whole, it wasn’t really a life-changing experience. In fact, I don’t even want to see the movie again. It’s too lukewarm, too spineless, too bland, too nicey-nice. It isn’t really bad, but it isn’t good, either. It is average. And, after waiting for two years, you want to see more than an average movie.
In one of the reviews we have seen, it says that the producers went after two audiences at once – the fantasy fans (lovingly referred to as "the Harry Potter crowd") and the evangelical community. Apparently, the movie was an attempt to please them both. Sadly, it didn’t work out very well.
That said, there are parts and pieces of LWW that I would definitely like to see again. The battle, for example, was out of this world. I also enjoyed following the story of Edmund. In the book, he is a mean kid who is being mean for no reason at all, and then makes a full 180 and becomes good. Kinda like what would happen if your school bully became a born-again believer… oh wait, I think I know how that works in real life. Whereas in the movie Edmund is this misunderstood preteen who lives in his own world and gets a lot of flak from everybody simply for being himself. He reminded me of LilProgrammer. He even looks like LilProgrammer did when he was that age. Needless to say, I found both the movie Edmund and his conversion more realistic than the book version.
The theater was quite empty; there was no applause after the movie; everyone just got out of there as quickly as possible. I probably won’t watch this movie again when it comes out on DVD, because my kids will kill me if I try.
