: Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Author: C.S. Lewis
This film is the first is a 3-DVD set I bought at Costco. The films were made for BBC television. I was a bit disappointed at the low production quality, which is much more like a play than a film (the talking animals are people dressed up in occasionally silly-looking costumes). Some special effects and unusual animals (flying horse, etc.) are done with cheesy animation on top of the live action footage, with minimal attempt, it seems, to try to make it blend seamlessly. However, the scripts are remarkably faithful to the books, even including much of the dialogue, and each film is 168 minutes long (nearly three hours) so there’s little left out. The pace is leisurely and never rushed. This film was very good, except for a few oddities: for instance, the actual stabbing of Aslan, the Lion, isn’t shown. I presume that was done to keep the violence down for children, but it made the death much less dramatic. All in all, not bad, and I liked the script, but I definitely prefer realism to a children’s play. At least Aslan wasn’t totally unimpressive (his head is completely puppet so we don’t have human eyes and mouth like most of the other animals).
Topic: [/movie] |
