Last night Jess and I enjoyed an opening-day showing of this epic film. We were NOT disappointed.
First, the good stuff:
– The analogy of GRACE that is found in CS Lewis’ book is NOT lost in the movie adaptation. It’s an incredible showing of Aslan’s love and self-sacrifice that is climaxed in the movie. Discussion with any-aged person after the movie could EASILY be swayed towards the similarities between Asland and Jesus.
– The movie’s special effects were great – they weren’t “Lord of the Rings”-ish, meaning that I think they were a few steps BELOW the special effects seen in bigger movies, though they fit the movie and will astonish viewers.
– As far as I know this movie was built with ALL unknown actors – and I place that in the “good stuff” category – that a movie can be as big as Narnia and not have a “Brad Pit” or similar name pushing it.
Now, for my list of “let downs”:
– as with any book-turned-movie, the struggle I always have is that my imagination builds a different “world” than what they can produce on-screen. In short, MY Narnia was WAY better than THEIR Narnia!
– while the actor’s were “no-namers”, they all DID lack in what I think is “good acting”. Especially young Lucy (Georgie Henley) – she was my least favorite sibling-actor in the movie. Her lack of enthusiastic crying over a “dead” Aslan confused the story in my opinion.
– and while I praised the CG (Computer Graphics) earlier, I did mention that they lacked a bit compared to other Blockbusters. In this movie there are A LOT of CG’ed animals. What was a bit disappointing was the consistency of their use – and the fakeness of their look. I specifically watched the same “loop” of a Leopard roaming through the crowd a few times and was distracted that it looked the same way and did the same action a few scenes later.
Finally – the movie was excellent – we will definitely be buying it as soon as it comes out – it’s an incredible story, and incredible analogy of what we as Christians live for and it is DEFINITELY better than the 1980’s BBC film that currently resides in our “Chronicles of Narnia” spot in our DVD library!
