Happy Panic Productions

Roger, Eber, I read you: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

The first ten or fifteen minutes are as expertly made as anything I've ever seen. You'll be hard pressed to find greater economy in establishing setting, sketching out four different characters, and getting the plot moving. As for the rest... it's about characters making interesting choices and the consequences of those choices, and it shocks me to realize how rare that's becoming in mainstream movies. And the animals look good. And Georgie Henley never fails to charm past the melting point. (It breaks my heart that such sweetness can be in the world.) But it's still kind of flat. I think the biggest problem was Tilda Swinton as the White Witch. She seemed like a cross between Cate Blanchett's Galadriel and Cruella de Vil if played by Meryl Streep instead of Glenn Close. Minus any dynamism. She was only the vague concept of a threat. Her menace was pure theory.

Ebert's got some good lines on this one, but it's my charge to repeat the bad ones.

For those who read the Lewis books as a Christian parable, Aslan fills the role of Christ because he is resurrected from the dead. Well, if that was all, then Lazarus could be a parable for Christ. Or could Gandalf. "Aslan dying for Edmund's sins," as Ebert writes later in this review, is more the point.

It is only after Edmund (Skandar Keynes) follows her into the wardrobe that evening that her breathless reports are taken seriously. .. Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell) believe Lucy and Edmund, and soon.... If you're going to be so prosaic as to merely retell the plot, could you at least retell it correctly? I saw this two weeks ago, yet I can remember plainly that Peter and Susan believe Edmund, not Lucy, because Edmund contradicts her. It's only after all four go into the wardrobe that they believe her. Thanks, Roger, for reminding me why I still write these things!

But it's remarkable, isn't it, that the Brits have produced Narnia, the Ring, Hogwarts, Gormenghast, James Bond, Alice and Pooh, and what have we produced for them in return? I was going to say "the cuckoo clock," but for that you would require a three-way Google of Italy, Switzerland and Harry Lime. I admit with apprehension that I know what Ebert means by that last sentence despite scarcely comprehending it. I just googled "three-way Google" and I still don't fathom its meaning. I doubt the Google help pages will tell me how to perform one.

*Accelerating the trademark dilution by refraining from capitalizing the verb. Because I might use another search engine. In theory.