Hang on a minute. Great Big Christian allegory? Shot in New Zealand? Weta special effects? Good slamming evil on the battlefield? If it sounds suspiciously like a certain trilogy, there is, one suspects, a good deal of preplanned overlap. The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe is, primarily, an attempt to wrought a Harry Potter/ Lord Of The Rings style blockbuster franchise from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia adventure and Andrew Adamson isn’t taking any chances with the first of seven planned releases.
See here the Fellowship shot, as weary travellers struggle across an icy peak. Or the birds taking a pivotal role in the final stand-off. Or the sweaty industrial conditions of the piece’s dark army. I don’t recall any of that stuff in the book. Still, in most respects, Mr. Adamson, who through default (or at least the happy box-office accident of Shrek and Shrek II) has become one of the planet’s most successful directors, does a banging job realising the material.
The film opens in Blitzed '40s England, where four young siblings are spirited away to the relative safety of the countryside. Soon, however, they stumble on a wardrobe which allows passage to the mythical land of Narnia, a rag-bag mythological backdrop (centaurs, talking beavers) where Christian soldiers rally around lion-god Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson with suitably regal tones) to battle the evil White Witch (Tilda Swinton). One of the moppets, Edmund (Keynes), falls in with the bad crowd – well, they’ve got all the Turkish Delight – prompting Aslan to offer himself for ransom. Yep, it’s The Passion Of The Christ, but, you know, for kids.
Much has been made of the film’s early attempts to curry favour with America’s red state residents and assorted religious maniacs, but if you ignore Narnia’s crass Christian archetypes, there is a decently entertaining yarn here. The script is quite witty, the child actors are endearingly normal and the action moves along with admirable pace. But is it this year’s Lord Of The Rings? Well, not quite. The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe is rather too child-friendly to play well with most fantasy buffs. The film is brighter, greener and populated by lots of cute animals. It’s an impressive production, but you can’t help but feel it’ll get clobbered by Kong when he lumbers along.