ISBN: 1795100229
Movie Review:
When I first saw Narnia I had recently seen Lord of the Rings and I compared them unfavourably. Not so, the books. When I read the books of The Lord of the Rings and later The Chronicles of Narnia there was no such comparison. Tolkien and C.S.Lewis, who were good friends, by the way, produced such different works in style and scope there was no thought of ranking them at all. Both are wonderful works and the two movies are also both wonderful in a very different way. Narnia’s beautiful prose is easily read by upper primary children but the Lord of the Rings is best left until high school. The director of Narnia has taken C.S. Lewis’s amazingly clear and simple writing style and transferred it to the screen as well as may be possible. Perhaps one day someone will do it better but none of the other attempts I have seen is as good as this movie. I am a bit sad that some of the people who see this movie will not see beyond its surface to the allegory of Christ represented by Aslan the lion but it would work without that understanding. I love the director’s making little Lucy the key character and am sure Lewis would have enjoyed that immensely. To me, this movie avoids the common trend to make the bad creatures in movies too realistic. I saw a movie in my childhood that lingers in the memories of my sisters and I as too scarily realistic. Have children become tougher? I think many have but we all know sensitive children and I don’t believe every child is emotionally capable of watching some scenes from recent children’s movies without real fear. Congratulations director Adamson for producing a children’s movie that is really for children and is set at their level.