The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Being a film that I’ve read all the books for, although this was years ago and I can only remember bits of it, it did give me an idea of what to expect. I was utterly blown away with this film, in fact if it wasn’t for the mandatory intermission halfway through the film, it even managed to make me forget that I was watching it in the twilight zone that is Scarborough’s Futurist cinema. I did almost explode when the intermission came on, but I won’t dwell on it as this film deserves a proper review.
I thought this film was absolutely spot on. For me, it created a fully believable and fantastic fantasy world, with a range of interesting, quirky and sometimes downright evil characters, some with superbly chosen voice actors. You could almost feel the initial wonder and surprise of a child stumbling upon a fantastic new world. This film made me want to find the story that I was writing and continue with it (Yeah, that’s right I was writing a story!). The film also sported with what I thought was a stunning soundtrack by Harry Greggson-Williams, my apparently 3rd favourite artist, according to Last.fm. The children’s acting wasn’t too shabby and certainly wasn’t as bad as the acting in the early Harry Potter films! The only thing with the acting and the portrayal of the children is that with the exception of one, they were just too nice!
All in all, I can’t emphasise enough how good this film was. It came so close to being better than Return of the King (my favourite film) for me. In a way it’s almost dissapointing that I’ll never like a film as much as RotK, but when I have thoughts like that I think it’s probably best to forget about them and watch RotK again.
The Chronicles of Narnia receives the coveted 5/5 starfish. Go watch it, and if you can help it, somewhere other than Scarborough!