Review: Chronicles of Narnia
Jun. 1st, 2006 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdThe Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was dead boring. I rarely do this, but about halfway through I shut off the DVD player and did Other Things and did not return to finish the movie till two nights later.
I had read one of the Aslan book about 20 years ago, but not this one. I know, it's weird to not start with the first book, but I bought it at a used bookstore because I liked the cover art, and it was the only CS Lewis tome on the shelf. He's a tough read. First of all because his writing is stilted, and secondly because of his strong Jesus message, which he beats his readers over the head with while never coming right out and actually naming Jesus.
What was good:
Costumes were superb.
So was set dressing.
There were some clever special effects done with CG cherry blossoms.
Cinematography had its moments.
What wasn't:
The acting. The children were not particularly talented, had trouble enunciating, had limited facial expressions and were downright unattractive. Tunmus (whom I thought was named Thomas until I turned on the subtitles) couldn't decide how gay he was, and he mumbled. The White Witch had one facial expression and it was (appropriately, I guess) frozen in place. Her neck looked like it had a metal rod up the back, at a slight angle from the rest of her body. It hurt to look at her.
Using live "talking" animals did not work for me. I would have preferred animated characters, especially for Aslan.
The film was way too violent for the G audience it targeted. Especially the Aslan sacrifice scene. I cringed at that myself.
Audio engineering was horrific. I couldn't hear the dialog over the music most of the time, they played games with the sound by cranking it way too high for the scenes without dialog, and then hit the mute button for the slow-mo snippets. Amateur. Juvenile.
WTF?
Won the Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup. I don't see why, there was little in the way of makeup as far as I can tell. Masks all over the place, but that's costuming, not makeup. The humans looked pasty-faced all through the movie - nothing to give a statue for there. It was also nominated for sound mixing, which makes no sense either.
I had read one of the Aslan book about 20 years ago, but not this one. I know, it's weird to not start with the first book, but I bought it at a used bookstore because I liked the cover art, and it was the only CS Lewis tome on the shelf. He's a tough read. First of all because his writing is stilted, and secondly because of his strong Jesus message, which he beats his readers over the head with while never coming right out and actually naming Jesus.
What was good:
Costumes were superb.
So was set dressing.
There were some clever special effects done with CG cherry blossoms.
Cinematography had its moments.
What wasn't:
The acting. The children were not particularly talented, had trouble enunciating, had limited facial expressions and were downright unattractive. Tunmus (whom I thought was named Thomas until I turned on the subtitles) couldn't decide how gay he was, and he mumbled. The White Witch had one facial expression and it was (appropriately, I guess) frozen in place. Her neck looked like it had a metal rod up the back, at a slight angle from the rest of her body. It hurt to look at her.
Using live "talking" animals did not work for me. I would have preferred animated characters, especially for Aslan.
The film was way too violent for the G audience it targeted. Especially the Aslan sacrifice scene. I cringed at that myself.
Audio engineering was horrific. I couldn't hear the dialog over the music most of the time, they played games with the sound by cranking it way too high for the scenes without dialog, and then hit the mute button for the slow-mo snippets. Amateur. Juvenile.
WTF?
Won the Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup. I don't see why, there was little in the way of makeup as far as I can tell. Masks all over the place, but that's costuming, not makeup. The humans looked pasty-faced all through the movie - nothing to give a statue for there. It was also nominated for sound mixing, which makes no sense either.
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Date: 2006-06-01 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 12:14 am (UTC)That's a very small part of the film, toward the end, but imdb.com shows a huge overlap in minor LOTR cast members and this film.