Fairy Stale

There's little to no magic left in the empty "The Chronicles of Narnia."  (Film Review)

by Michael Sean McGowan

The Upside: Great score.

The Downside: Everything else.

    The angels of fairness and common sense say you shouldn't compare The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to Peter Jackson's successful Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Both are based on series of books that were around before anyone involved in their respective adaptations was born, each has their own deserved fan base, and each has made their own personal stake in 20th Century fantasy literature.

    But let's be realistic for a moment- you're going to compare them and all the talk about differing levels of maturity and which one has greater influences of Christian symbology are going to fall to the wayside when you realize that Lord of the Rings was a trilogy that was built by hands who wanted to recount its story and Narnia was made to ride the coattails of Lord of the Rings.  If both stories could stand on their own, I wouldn't compare them, but since Narnia is not only so lame, but also actively suffering from a "wanna-be" syndrome, it's open season.

    Adapted from the series by C.S. Lewis, Narnia is about the four most personality-free kids in all of Second World War England who discover a portal (gee, haven't seen that before) to the mystical realm of Narnia through a wardrobe in the spare bedroom of the cottage where they're waiting out the final days of the war.  I've never read Lewis' books, so I'll refrain from source commentary, however Narnia (the film) hobbles itself fairly swiftly and disastrously right out of the gate by dragging us back and forth between its fantasy realm and the English cottage (what connection the kids have to the eclectic old professor who lives there is never illuminated), neither of which seem particularly interesting.  Narnia has been cast in eternal winter by the evil White Witch (Tilda Swinson, doing her best Cate Blanchett impersonation), however with its coats of fake snow never looks more real than a mock-up Christmas village (few of the shots during these parts include the horizon, only enhancing the feel that we're looking at a half-dressed set).  One of the Pevensie kids, Edmund (Skandar Keynes), gives up his brother and sisters to the Witch, who wants to kill them all to stop a prophesy in which they become rulers of Narnia (boy, they don't make those prophesies like they used to).

    Narnia feels like a Disney project through-and-through; slick on the outside, hollow inside.  Director Andrew Adamson was one-half of the team that made SKG Dreamworks' uber-successful Shrek movies (I wonder what Jeffrey Katzenberger is thinking right now), but didn't bring along any of those movies' cheeky sense of irony or self-deprecating humility.  Despite that every touch feels like Middle Earth-lite, Narnia is primarily a spectacle machine- we eventually get the strange creatures, the clanging sword battle sequences.  The trouble is Narnia is so poorly acted, it's characters so flat, we invest nothing into it, and somehow manage to get even less in return.  Call it irony or call it serendipity that Narnia is opening a few days before Peter Jackson unleashes his King Kong on the world.  Now Jackson is a director who knows spectacle- and he's also smart enough to know that his whole 10-hour plus Lord of the Rings saga would have bored us silly if we didn't immerse ourselves into the lives of its characters, both good and evil (it's telling to Jackson's chops that the twisty, deceitful Gollum emerged as one of the most sympathetic characters of the series).  Narnia is the very example of why good people roll their eyes when they hear the word "blockbuster."  It may have been made with reverence, but almost no passion and the frequent visual references to LOTR (come on, don't try to tell me the scene of the Witch's henchmen forging out weapons wasn't lifted directly from the mills of Isengard) don't help settle the longing urge to go out and see a better movie.

    Let's face it- CGI is here to stay, but you have to know you're in trouble when a movie's computer-generated anthropomorphic animals put in far better performances than their human counterparts.  The Pevensie children are probably the biggest set of empty slates to step into a magical kingdom, only exhibiting personality traits on cue and otherwise just tossing off one bland line of dialogue after another.  Narnia was penned by four separate screenwriters, and it's a pitfall of the imagination to think of how they could come up with something this anemic when you consider it only took one man to write the seven books on which the mythology is based.  As far as the animals, the CGI is done well enough that they display appropriate levels of fear, doubt, or menace, and some of the voice work is rather good, including Liam Neeson (as the feline/messiah Aslan), who's gifted with a intonation that would be perfect for audio books.

    Narnia aims for a much younger crowd than LOTR, but it'll be a fight to catch on.  The "reality" portions of the movie are just too dry and sterile (and dwelt in far too long) to keep the first hour from crashing through glaciers of boredom and the fantasy elements are, simply, not that fantastic.  The film does culminate in an enormous battle sequence that looks like a Jim Henson production of Braveheart, but since it is robbed of any sense of consequence, it really is nothing more than the most expansive play date ever put on film.  Harry Gregson-William's superb score is the only element here doing any heavy lifting- it is romantic and sweeping when the script and actors can't find a single emotional leg to stand on.

    I don't know if Narnia is so inspiration-free to be considered calculating, another merchandising grab for the holiday season- that's an individual call.  A couple weeks ago we got Walk the Line, a movie that was, oddly about Johnny Cash but not about his music.  In the same fashion, The Chronicles of Narnia is a movie that is about majesty, but lumbers rather than sweeps, and is about magic, even though the eye candy only puts in a fraction of an effort.  I don't doubt that many kids are going to make the leap this weekend from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which I've suddenly gained new respect for) to this.  The tragedy for Narnia is that next week will probably find them making the leap back again.  D+

Note: On Salon.com Laura Miller  evokes the controversy that seemingly won't die when it comes to Narnia, asking how eight-year-old kids will respond to the Christian "propaganda" of the film.  Jeez, folks, let's get real.  Okay, yeah- the Pevensie children in the movie are referred to as the "sons of Adam" and "daughters of Eve" and the (SPOILER ALERT) sacrifice by Aslan has echoes of the crucifixion of Christ (although, correct me if I'm wrong, unlike Aslan I don't think Christ got out of it due to a dogmatic loophole).  In the one defense I'll come to for the film, yes- you can pick out distinct nuggets of Christian theology here and there, but you could also do that in The Matrix, The Godfather, and even in The Lord of the Rings.  The truth is, religious and spiritual references always make filmmakers giddy; they add another dimension of meaning that the movie may or may not deserve.  The story of the Crucifixion is invoked not as a propaganda tool, but because the theme (hero lays down his life for the greater good) is a bulkhead of fine storytelling and will never fail to inspire or amaze.  So when it comes to this matter, lay off.  Besides, the question you should be asking isn't whether or not the movie is trying to push Christianity down people's throats (it doesn't), but whether or not it sucks (it does).

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