Cheap The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (DVD) (Richard Dempsey, Sophie Cook, Jonathan R. Scott, Sophie Wilcox) (Marilyn Fox (II)) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The children learn that Aslan, the lion king of this world of Narnia, is back and can help them against the witch. But when they learn that Peter (Richard Dempsey) was actually in the witch's service they need even more help. Aslan is as good as he is powerful, and with him all things are possible. [Color, originally aired in 1988, with a running time of 3 hours.]

This movie (actually three television episodes) is a based quite closely on C.S. Lewis's book of the same title. Some of the acting is a little overdone, and the cartoon creatures look awfully two-dimensional, but the story is nothing short of excellent and the lion Aslan is surprisingly well done. Also, I do think that the creators of this movie did an excellent job of capturing the mood of the book and bringing the viewer through the story without too much cutting. (Books made into movies are often butchered!)

My eleven-year-old daughter read the book recently, while I read it a long time ago. My whole family enjoyed this movie immensely, and I enjoyed the lessons that it taught. My wife and I tried to explain the Christian symbols as the story moved along. We loved this movie, and highly recommend it to you.

Wonderful and Magical
I have all three of the Chronicles of Narnia video sets - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe; Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; and The Silver Chair, having been given them as gifts at least 7 years ago. I am shocked that these are now currently not available, especially with the current Harry Potter craze. The Chronicles of Narnia are wonderful stories for children and adults alike and these British productions from the late 1980s of four of the seven C.S. Lewis books are wonderful and magical. I thought I recalled still seeing these in the PBS Video Catalogs from time to time - I could be mistaken though. Even though I already have these tapes, I hope they are re-released soon for others to enjoy!!!

Bad Beginning....
This no-budget production from the BBC fails to live up to the production values of films made 100 years ago. Shoddy production design offers us absurd anthropromorphic animals of the stage-horse variety. The problem is not the budget - I offer the example of John Coates's "The Snowman", which opens with a simple shot of a man entering a wintry wood overlaid with a voiceover, all you need to create an atmosphere of impending enchantment. Instead, the producers foolishly try to emulate Hollywood-style visual effects on a shoestring budget. The results are depressing. The truth is, even with a huge budget, no one involved with the design and execution of this telefilm would be capable of creating a memorable visual.

The 4 children playing the leads are chubby and indolent looking. They consistently seem to be blissfully unaware of the fact that they are being filmed - were they chosen randomly from the nearest grade school? Aslan is a lifeless animatronic head which rasps out his lines via poorly synched voice over.

However, the first 30 minutes or so are wonderful, the minimally made up Mr. Tumnus the clear highlight. The score is very good, from the same composer who scored the deservedly praised BBC "Brideshead Revisited". The text of the telefilm is also very accurate to the text and Christian religious themes of the novel by CS Lewis.

This series gets better with each outing though: "Prince Caspian" ekes its head a little beyond its predecessor, "Dawn Treader" surpasses both by leaps and bounds and finally "The Silver Chair" carries itself with considerable aplomb and charm, despite some very poor designs and effects.

Overall, a decent warm up for the curious before the real thing hits cinemas Christmas 2005.