brainwagon

Went to see this last night with my wife Carmen, and all I can say is wow. Really well done. We both enjoyed it, although I thought that the pacing was initially a bit slow. Comparisons with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings are inevitable, and I must say: I found the effects to be of the highest quality, very consistent and I found Narnia’s battles to be even better than those in the Return of the King. The four child actors all did very credible jobs, with (I think) the girls outshining the boys. The movie can be a bit intense (it is rated PG) with some loud scary battle sequences that seemed to upset some of the younger and more sensitive children in the audience, but they calmed down in the more uplifting moments and were clapping.

Scanning the list of user reviews on Yahoo! I’m left with two major impressions of negative comments on this movie:

1. One group claims that anyone who thinks this is better than Harry Potter is crazy. Well, it was better than Harry Potter in virtually every way.
2. Another small minority thinks that it’s important to bring up the idea that C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books are just thinly veiled metaphors for Christianity. While such accusations are in some sense true, get over it, and enjoy a very nicely done movie.

I suspect we’ll see some Oscar nods for effects, for costume and art design, and maybe even some surprise nods in other categories.