Chronicles of Narnia, The: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
At the risk of sounding totally retarded: this is a kids flick. Made by one of the directors of the Shrek movies it shares the same lightweight sensibilities, and while it may entertain the little ones with the magical characters and colorful landscapes, there is nothing of substance to be found here. I sincerely doubt that the children whose imagination may be captivated by this today will be sentimentally attached to this film twenty years on like my generation is to films like The Neverending Story, The Dark Crystal, and D.A.R.Y.L. (okay, maybe that last one was just me).
Somewhere along the line brilliant films like Toy Story 2, and indeed most of Pixar’s catalogue, has convinced us that children’s films have this “second level” to them that kids might not get, but which makes the film accessible and enjoyable for adults. Truth is these films are a fucking rarity. People often say they love Shrek for its cute pop-culture references and dumb puns but no one could possibly compare that film to Toy Story, or even Star Wars as films that appeal across generations. And this certainly makes no attempt to join that elite class.
The highlight of the whole cinematic experience for me wasn’t even in the damn film, but was an ‘interactive’ advertisement where a female audience member stood up and started yelling at the commercial playing to “get on with it” and “hurry it up”. A guy in the commercial then turned and talked back to this person and they had a brilliantly staged conversation that ended up being less about annoying cinema adds and more about joining the media course at a local university. Even funnier was that the audience had no idea how to react to this, with a few sparse claps sounding off before the inevitable “what the fuck was that?” whispers. About half an hour into the film I was also tempted to stand up and re-enact her performance by telling the film’s characters to “get on with it”, and “hurry it up”, but I since I was there to escape from the 42 degree outside temperature and enjoy the artic air conditioning of the cinema, I was in no hurry to leave. I also doubted that such a performance would elicit any such applause from my fellow audience members.
As far as the film goes, there really wasn’t anything outstanding to discuss. It was far from terrible, and a small mercy on a hot day, but the crime of being bland is sometimes worse than being shithouse. The start, wartime London being bombed, was the best part of the entire film and the only time I felt the kids were in any real danger. The kids themselves were quite good, except for Susan, the eldest girl, who really didn’t do anything except make the odd Scully-esque comment about believing in “the rational explanation for things”. Her lack of character was emphasized at the end of the film. All the children had been given gifts (from Santa Claus, naturally) to assist them on their adventure – all gifts that predictably came in handy during the great battle, with the exception of Susan’s gift, a bow and arrow set that remained unused at the end of all the fighting, despite the fact that we had sat through a scene of her practicing with them earlier. I was about to lean over to my friend and say “what about her bow…” when, out of nowhere, a little gnomish creature (a lackey of the White Queen, and assumedly a hopeful comic relief) comes bumbling loudly onto screen only to be very awkwardly and amusingly shot by Susan. He may have fulfilled his destiny as the comic relief but I sincerely doubt that it was an intentional laugh.
Special mention also has to be made to the uncomfortable feeling induced when the very adult and very male faun invites the very young and very little girl into his home when she first discovers Narnia. Just when I was questioning whether the paedophilic tension actually existed, or was just a product of the cynical society in which we live undeservedly tarnishing an innocent children’s text, the faun puts young Lucy to sleep with a very dodgy look in his eye – and she wakes disoriented, with time passed, to find him huddled in a corner mumbling about “having done a very wrong thing”. It certainly felt wrong, even if it was clarified moments later that he was only planning on kidnapping her. Maybe there was a second level to the film after all.
Uninspired and bordering on boring, this film is indeed Lord of the Rings-lite, regardless of all the PR work done by the filmmakers claming the opposite. That extra action scenes feel like bad off-cuts to one of the Rings films and that they were added to pad out the story underlines that perhaps, as loved as the book is, there really wasn’t enough going on to warrant a feature film – or at least one that went for two and a half hours.
Perhaps it is time to leave the kids films to the kids again.