PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 12/9/05)

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is more than just a mouthful, it's a franchise killer. Disney has spared no expense in bringing the first installment of C.S. Lewis' beloved seven-book series to the screen, but they've given us no reason to want to visit Narnia ever again.

Fantasy franchises have certainly gotten off to rockier starts before. The first Harry Potter movie was slavishly faithful to the novel and not nearly enough fun in the telling, but at least there you had a series that only gets stronger with each successive book. Meanwhile, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is far and away the most entertaining of the Narnia adventures, not to mention the best known. If handled correctly, the movie might have enchanted audiences into returning again and again to this same wondrous land of mythical creatures and religious allegory (the reason, believe you me, that Disney ponied up Lord of the Rings-worthy dough for the adaptation).

Instead, the movie is a leaden, slow-moving beast. Director Andrew Adamson, who co-helmed the Shrek series before getting in over his head with live action, clearly takes enormous pleasure in designing centaurs and cyclopes, werewolves and fauns, but he captures none of the narrative charm or personality of Lewis' source material. Gone is the benevolent old storyteller eager to stimulate our imagination, replaced by a personality-devoid treatment that locks Lewis' vision to the state of CG circa 2005.

Consulting my battered old copy of the book, I see that Lucy (the youngest of the four Pevensie children) finds her way through the wardrobe on page 6, and from there on, the story tumbles head-over-heels into otherworldly fantasy. By contrast, the movie takes forever and a day just to reach Narnia, opening with a deafening CG air raid and plodding through every step along the children's journey to their country home.

What's meant to establish character and build anticipation merely forestalls that which fans have dutifully paid their admission to see: the Pevensies' entry into Narnia. To make matters worse, once they finally do cross over into the magical realm, Adamson and company go crazy with the camera angles, a sign of either their inexperience or their distrust for the material. Why ricochet our attention all over the place when a sweeping wide shot would do?

Predictably, Narnia itself looks like Middle Earth by day (basically, New Zealand without the benefit of blue filters and scenic flyovers), although the WETA effects that impressed us so in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (not to mention the forthcoming King Kong) have been downgraded to weak talking-animal animation from Rhythm & Hues, the company behind Cats & Dogs. The mouths move funny, the fur looks fake and voices seem ill-suited to the animals they personify (by substituting Brian Cox with a soft-spoken Liam Neeson, they've effectively pussified the movie's Mufasa-like main character).

Virtually every creative decision defies logic (consider the White Witch's impossibly awkward costume or the Björk-sounding New Age score). It feels as if the book were adapted by someone who spends too much time attending sci-fi conventions. For Adamson, the appeal must have been the epic battle sequence at the end of the film, which is truly a visceral and rewarding experience after slogging through the two hours that precede it. And yet, the fact that the movie privileges this sequence above all just goes to show how woefully misplaced its priorities are. Disney should've hired Adamson to direct episode seven, The Last Battle, and given the first installment to a more capable storyteller.—Peter Debruge