Narnia recap
So I'm not sure how I feel about it. In some ways, it was nearly perfect, yet at the same time, there was no point at which I was really blown away. There was nothing really bad and quite a lot good, but it didn't quite have that certain something that leaves me squeeing with joy.
On the deviations from the book: This is usually my sticking point with movie adaptations of books. I'm a book snob, I admit, and I almost always think the book is better, etc. I could never quite forgive the LotR movies for their deviations from the books, for instance. But most of the places where LWW deviated, I actually thought it was a GOOD move! In many ways, the best part of the movie--and the most moving part--was the beginning focus on the war and how that experience of the blitz, having their father away as a soldier (didn't mind that invention), and getting shipped off to the country was totally formative in their characters, and especially in Edmund's. So that was a FANTASTIC move. And then most of the little deviations I thought were pretty good moves. I like that they took out the bit of sexism in Father Christmas's speech while nevertheless retaining much of the speech itself, etc.
There were really only two parts that annoyed me. The first was the Professor--they definitely should have stuck to the book for him. I didn't like that he was inaccessible, and I didn't like that he was so eccentric-seeming, especially in his conversation with Susan and Peter. He shouldn't have given quite so much away then. I did, however, like the little after-scene with Lucy, even insofar as it deviates a bit from what's in the book. The nit-picky thing that annoyed me was that Peter rides a unicorn in battle. Um, did we read ahead??? Because, just in case there was a doubt, The Last Battle makes it quite clear that one does not RIDE unicorns! Also, Edmund rides a talking horse; Narnian talking horses, we learn in The Horse and His Boy, will abide riders in extreme circumstances, but not as a matter of course. Do your homework, folks!
On the film qua film: As a film, it was quite well-done, I thought, but a little too derivative of similar sorts of films. You couldn't see those battle scenes without LotR in your head; I'm not sure how they might have devised a different way of showing the battle scenes and such, but perhaps there could have been something a bit more original there. I was glad, though, that they didn't fall into the LotR trap of inflating the battle scenes at the expense of the rest of the plot. Obviously, there was a lot more battle in the film than in the book, but I was glad of that: that's the advantage of this kind of medium change--it allows you to show visually the sorts of things that don't work as well in narrative (particularly a narrative voice like Lewis's). But they didn't overdo it, fortunately.
I also thought they made just enough but not too much of the Christian allegory--that is, they left it more or less exactly as it is in the book. They didn't try to downplay it or take it out, but neither did they beat the audience over the head with it. Just right, I thought.
The acting was also pretty good across the board. I have always been a big fan of Susan and Edmund and less of a fan of Peter and Lucy--Peter and Lucy were always too perfect. Peter is less so in the film, and I think if I were a young girl being introduced to the film, I would definitely be a Peter fan--he's quite the cutie. The actors playing Susan and Edmund both do fantastic jobs, and I continue to love those characters; possibly, I love Edmund even more--he was great! (Oh, and another significant deviation from the book that I liked: the scene with Edmund and Tumnus in the Witch's castle! Same with the scene with the fox. Both scenes do a great job of showing Edmund's misery and attempts at growth, both of which Lewis describes but doesn't really show.) I still don't really like Lucy; I'm not sure it's the actress's fault because she did quite a good job for someone so young. I thought she was a bit too young, really, as I've always seen Lucy just a tad older than that--more like a year younger than Edmund, as she's supposed to be. But mostly it's just that I've never seen Lucy as an interesting character at all. Oh well. The White Witch was great, though her hair was pretty funky. I was a little disappointed with Liam Neeson's Aslan, but again, I'm not sure it was anything he did. It's just that I kept hearing Liam Neeson's voice instead of Aslan's. I wonder if they might not have done better to cast someone whose voice was not quite so well-known.
So yes, overall, I enjoyed it and would see it again, but I didn't fall madly in love with it--and I still can't quite figure out why because, like I said, it was quite perfect in many ways. And I was really worried about them "ruining my Narnia" by deviating all funkily from the book, and they didn't even do that! But nevertheless, I was underwhelmed. Are they planning to do the other books, though? Because LWW has never been my favorite of the books, anyway--would love to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, for instance!