The Lion, the Witch, and the Thinly Veiled Religious Allegory

[madcapheathen]

Kelly and I saw Narnia yesterday. It wasn't terrible, mind you, but it had quite a few flaws. First, the things it did well: The White Witch was excellent. Tilda Swinton is absolutely awesome as an attractive yet androgynous and creepy bad guy (see the otherwise hilariously pulpy Constantine), although there were many, many moments during which she missed the opportunity to execute one of the good guys. And for that matter, there were several points in which JesAslanus failed to bite off ol' frosty's face. Also, I may be picking a little nit with this one, but how the hell to presumably mammalian mermaids survive when all the waters of Narnia have been frozen for 100 years? Furthermore, it is possible to make an epic fantasy battle scene without making me think about Warcraft III every 30 seconds. Honestly, the protagonists in this movie are in desperate need of a focus-firing lesson courtesy of the hundred or so dryads under their control. A few more substantive complaints: this movie, like so many others, was hostile to characters who like to think. The older sister, Susan, is painted as something of a bitch for not believing without any evidence that her sister was whisked away to another world by a walk-in closet. Also, regardless of your beliefs regarding Christianity, it's more than a little creepy that the stated purpose of the well-hidden (for the target audience, at least) religious overtones are to soften children up to religious conversion later in life. It's a bit like that episode of Lassie SMOKE where grandma gets stuck SMOKE in the ARE YOU SMOKING YET? well. Propaganda, no matter how entertaining it might be, just ain't cool. All that said, the movie on the whole came off as a passable knockoff of Lord of the Rings with far, far less depth.

My life outside the multiplex is, by contrast, far less entertaining, unless you have some strange fetish for the sodium hydrobromate reduction of 2-methylcyclohexone (which, by the way, smells fucking awful).

One week left!

-Josh