The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

Over the Christmas holidays, I am going to try to cram in as many movies as I can as it seems there are a lot of titles that are finally catching my interest. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn't one that I was dying to see or anything, but the reviews had been strong and there was some interest among my friends, so why not give it a go?

I found out something rather interesting when reading up some reviews on the newest franchise endorsed by the people at Disney. The writer of the Narnia books, C.S. Lewis, was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien (guess they shared the same affection for initializing their first names) who wrote the Lord of the Rings books. They were both professors at Oxford at the same time. The comparisons between the two films are inevitable, but I didn't think it could be as more direct as that.

The running time is about 2 hours and 20 minutes and to its credit, it doesn't feel that long at all. The pacing is great. The story doesn't take too much time to unfold when we first meet the characters of Lucy, Susan, Edmund and Peter. I had no problems with the acting, in fact, all the performances were quite strong and I was especially impressed with the young Lucy character portrayed by Georgie Henley. The costume and makeup work of the White Witch, who looked like a demonized Cate Blachette, was effective and coming out of a fairy tale is the perfect villainess for this type of story.

I commented to my friends it seems weird that the author would have the lead villain be female. Did he have issues with women? Lucy and Susan start off so sweet and innocent, but maybe Lewis feels that as a girl matures, she becomes more vindictive and distrusting. I'm getting sidetracked, back to the movie!

CGI is always flawed. Most movies heavenly invested in CGI always have points in the film where it is blatantly obvious it is run by a computer program. But for the most part, Narnia succeeds in having believable animals and other imagined creatures play their speaking parts.

The comparisons to Lord of the Rings are just. The main plot of Narnia, a circle of friends/family not unlike the Fellowship of the Ring, come together to save their kingdom. The sacrifices and decisions each character can be paralleled with a point in the LOTR movies. The battle sequence goes for that epic feel too, with wide sweeping shots and tons of CGI. But it's not done as well.

I like the characters better in the LOTR movies. The fight sequences in Narnia can't match those in LOTR either. They are more intense, longer and just plain more exciting. Seeing that the main characters in Narnia are children doesn't help it's case either. Guys like Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom are more mature and skilled than any newcomer can be, although those newcomers have the potential to lead long careers in the acting business. And I found to be more emotionally invested in Frodo, Legolas, Sam, Aragon, Gandalf, etc. than any character in Narnia. But with more movies to come, maybe that will change.

We'll call this flick LOTR light but it's still worth the price of admission. If you had problems with LOTR or just fantasy movies in general, take a pass, but you probably already knew that.