Out of the Closet

JJo and I managed to score ourselves some advance screening tickets to 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe' (LWW) this weekend. How was it? Well, I'm about to tell you--what I thought anyway.

LWW is one of my very favorite books. I distinctly remember first hearing the story in our Sunday school class when I was six or seven. Our class watched about ten or fifteen minutes of the cartoon version (which is surprisingly faithful to the book--all the dialogue is lifted straight from the pages so there are no wisecracking animals or anything like that) every Sunday and then the Sunday school teachers would tell us what each of the characters represented.

There has been a lot of criticism lately over Christians who would force 'their interpretation' of Narnia onto a child. These critics believe that nobody should tell kids about the allegory in C.S. Lewis' story and that it's only as Christian as you want it to be--that it's REALLY just a fun fantasy novel.

Well, I hope those critics are pleased with themselves, robbing children of the discovery that not everything in the world is literal. When I was told that Aslan was Christ and the White Witch was the devil...that the story of LWW is a retelling of the Crucifixion/Resurrection story, I began to look at the world in a different way. Things began to carry a deeper meaning. I began digging in to find the deeper, hidden messages behind stories--not just settling for surface level. In fact, I believe I owe a great deal of how my mind developed to discovering Narnia at an early age.

So I think it goes without saying I'm a big fan of the book.

As for the film version... not so much.

The kids do an admirable job, with little Lucy being the Kewpie-doll cutest of the bunch. The film is chock-full of gee-whiz! state of the art CGI and a score that doesn't let up. Performances all around range from just fine to swell. There's a lot to like.

However, there's a very familiar feeling to it all. We've seen it all before. We know what a CGI ogre and CGI goblin look like. We've seen so many epic battle scenes since 'Braveheart' that the whole 'fields of war' thing feels a mite stale. And so on.

Still, much like the recent 'Willy Wonka' film, up until the halfway point or so, the film is surprisingly accurate to the book, right down to Lucy entering the wardrobe and looking over her shoulder to make sure she can still see the light from the spare room behind her (for she knew it was a foolish thing to shut oneself up in a wardrobe).

Then the halfway mark hits and it becomes an action movie. The children run for their lives for the next twenty minutes, outrun a pack of wolves, and go on a white water adventure as the frozen river they're trying to cross begins to crack beneath them due to the rapidly approaching spring (in the book, spring is a GOOD thing. It meant that the Savior had come. In the film, it's just another danger for them to endure).

Another fatal misstep comes from the director's decision to cut away from Aslan's resurrection in favor of yet another dime-a-dozen Lord of the Rings-style battle sequence. I remember reading in an interview early on that he always felt that the death and resurrection scene in the book was dull, dull, dull--that what he always wanted to see was the battle scene that takes place when Aslan comes back to life, flies to the White Witch's palace, and breathes life into her stone prisoners. Yeah! Who wants to see all that stuff anyway? Let's see another battle!

Nice try, Mr. Director Man. You just screwed up your movie.

Folks, we all saw ten hours of battles in the three Lord of the Rings movies. If I see one more windswept battle field with orcs and ghoulies with bad teeth roaring on one side and the good guys with clean teeth cheering on the other... It's simply not exciting. What you want to see is what's going on with Aslan. As it is, we get to see one statue come to life, then we cut back to the battle sequence for ten minutes, then we cut back to Aslan who, during this time, has restored all the statues to back to their living selves.

Well great. Instead of seeing something different and interesting, we're treated to yet another tedious fantasy battle.

It's all very distracting. Lewis' novel is very tight. He didn't write filler (*cough* *Rowling* *cough*). Everything in his book is there for a very specific reason. By packing the latter half of the movie with so much extra stuff to make the film more mainstream and 'Disnefied', the meanings behind Lewis' images fail to carry the same emotional impact they have in the book--to the point that, in the film, when Aslan kills the White Witch and says, "It is finished" it sounds less like Lewis and more like a production company who wants to try desperately to cater to both a Christian and a secular audience. It sounds false. Nice try, Disney. I wasn't born yesterday.

In the end, if you really want to see it, what the heck. It's not terrible (though the director really shows his roots when his talking animals make wisecracky Shrek-esque jokes) and the White Witch's palace truly is a wonder to behold. By the end, however, the film has totally lost its focus, trying to play to both the religious and secular crowds. This is a mainstream Narnia. Not the one Lewis wrote.

C+ to B- (depending on my mood)