Narnia, Dude!

Amy and I went to see the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on Friday. It was ok. While the Dreamworks version had vastly inferior special effects (and a far more annoying Lucy) it was truer to the actual story. Some of new movie's additions and alterations to the story worked well. They emphasized Edmund's betrayl more. Lewis had a tendency to put character vignettes (like the Witch running into the animals Christmas dinner) into his story that were outside the main plotline, the movie tried to merge them back in. It was fairly successful. I even liked the bickering beavers.

I really hate the bashful hero theme though. At no point do the children actually commit to their roles as the future Kings and Queens of Narnia. Even at the last moment they are talking about running back home. I can't imagine them staying and ruling for more than a few months before they got sick of it and popped back through the wardrobe door. In the real story the kids committed to help almost immediately after finding out about Mr. Tumnus and the prophecy. The filmmakers could have made this very powerful by emphasizing the parallelism between England fighting the Nazis and the children fighting the Witch. But they didn't. So what we have is annoying whiney kids for almost the entirety of the movie. Peter never acts like High King, which is good because they never call him High King either. He's just the bossy one.

I also thought there were a few Britishisms that could have been explained away with a few bits of expository dialogue. Most people didn't know who Father Christmas was when he showed up. He doesn't look like Santa Claus. He is a British Father Christmas: thin (in comparison), bearded, and all clad in fur. But if one of the kids said "Father Christmas", everyone would have understood.

All in all it is worth a watch, but it could have been better.