The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Both Jude & I read the book when we were much younger and remember it to different degrees. I suppose you could think of the movie as a kind of Lord of the Rings for the under-18 set but with what is probably a starker Christian allegory. One could go on and on about the religiou undertones (or overtones) of the story, but as with all allegories, they are meant to be symbolic, not literal- as A.O. Scott wrote in the NYTimes, you don't find talking beavers in the Bible...

Anyways, we enjoyed the movie very much. It was less epic than I had expected but because of that, also with alot more heart. You could palpably feel the human emotions between the children (resentment, betrayal, forgiveness, reconciliation), but at the same time, also the lofty weight of the battle between good and evil. The casting was truly genius, especially Tilda Swinton as the exquisitely malevolent White Witch. It is her almost other-wordly allure that made her an equally evocative Angel Gabriel in Constantine but here, she has truly outshone herself, literally. Some literary characters will forever be immortalized by the actors who play them- Holly Gollighty, Dorothy, Harry Potter, and now, the White Witch. But I thought little Georgie Henley as Lucy was truly the soul of the story. Her well of empathy, faith in goodness, and artless courage made me smile everytime she was happy, and tear whenever her little heart was broken, either by her brother's dishonesty, or at Aslan's sacrifice. Just wonderful.

I did have issues with some of the battle scenes being a little too vivd for young children, and in that vein, also share some of Jude's discomfort at the metaphor of warfare in what is essentially a Christian allegory. But during this holiday movie season, as long as you suspend your religious or spiritual anxieities at the theatre door and embrace the story as a universal tale of maturity, sacrifice and triumph, I assure that you will find profoundly more genuine wonderment and joy in the two-half hours than a giant simian or sashaying bespectacled fowl will ever come close to doing.