The Chronicles of Narnia, Review

Last night Chris, Jenette, and I went to go see the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. I had hoped that it would be a good movie (hence me actually going to see it) but it turns out that it is probably most enjoyable movie that I have seen at a movie theatre all year.

Now, I have never read the book, so that my un-sway my opinion of the movie somewhat, but I think that most people have not read the book, or at least to the extent that people had read Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, so I don’t think that my un-knowledge of the book should be that big of a deal for the review.

Anyways, on to the movie. (I will try to be general as to not give away anything in the movie.) Overall the story is great, it is about two brothers and two sisters making their way through Narnia to find Aslan. The sibling interactions are portrayed accurately, but without rubbing normal birth order rules in your face. The general story line is about betrayal and redemption, which is not really that unique for a movie. But what does make the movie unique is the strong Christian symbolism in the movie. By strong symbolism I mean the story is a parallel to Christianity, not that everything is blatantly a Christian reference (Besides Son of Adam, Daughter of Eve...) It would be interesting to see what a non-Christian would pick up from the movie as being religious ideas, and what they would think is just unique to the movie. (If you are a non-Christian, I’ll help you some, there is no talk of a White Witch in Christianity, that is unique to Narnia. ^_^) Even though there is some sword play and a battle scene there is no blood in the movie, but the fight scenes are still fulfilling. And yes, the ending is a happy one.

The only thing that annoyed me some was the use of CG. There were some times that things were computer rendered when I didn’t think that they had to be. But other than that I had no complaints about the movie.

The weirdest thing was watching a movie that I have never seen before and but still know what is going to happen before it does, due to the parallels to Christianity. It’s not really a downfall of the movie, because it is still fun to see it play out.
As I said at the beginning, I think that this movie is pretty good and is probably the best movie of the year. It is defiantly worth going to see. I’ll give it 9.5 out of 10.

Trailer, More info.