It's Narnia Day! - A Preview Review

While the vast majority of the world had to wait until today to get their first viewing of the new movie based on The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, I had a chance to see it last night. I have to admit that I bought in to the hype surrounding this film, and being a fan of the book I was quite excited to see the film. Beware there could be some spoilers below.

So, I went in with high hopes for the film. I came out with mixed feelings about the movie. Don't get me wrong it's a thoroughly good movie, but there were a couple of scenes that just killed it for me. Here, let me explain. The big deal surrounding this film is its visual effects, 95% of which are incredible. There are two (maybe three) scenes that were so obviously green screened that they made the film feel amateur - or like the majority of Christian films. In my mind when I subtract these scenes from the movie it qualifies as a really good film, but when I add them I just feel let down. Ok, that's the bad part of my thoughts.

The story is great, as is to be expected, though it has been tweaked. Some of my favorite lines from the book are given to different people, but at least they are there. There are some additions for context that work well and don't detract from the story. I thought Mr. Tumnus comes off differently in the movie than he did in the book - that is his character seems much darker in the movie. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are made into better characters in the movie than I thought they were in the book, they also become more central to the story. Aslan, as voiced by Liam Nieson, is incredible - much better than the freak that voiced him in the Focus on the Family Radio Theater version. Of all the animals that talked I was most convinced by Aslan. That leads to another issue, it was hard to buy in to talking animals - which was also C.S. Lewis' issue with a live action movie - it works for some of the animals and not so much for others. The children do a good job, my wife thought they were stiff at the beginning of the movie - I think that was on purpose to show their growth over the course of the movie. Lucy steals the whole film, she is the cutest little girl - she looks just like my niece.

Those are my thoughts at this juncture. I hope that I didn't ruin it for anyone. Like I said, my feelings are mixed about the movie. I have to go see it two more times this weekend, so we'll see how I feel come Monday, but right now I'm kind of let down, based upon my expectations coming in.