Last night it was between The Tourist and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and we chose Narnia. I enjoyed the first two movies, thought they were well done for what they were (children’s fantasy stories), and hoped the latest installment would be similar. Needless to say, I was not transported to a dreamworld of magic.
It’s one thing to get let down with a film when you had high expectations for it, but it’s worse when you only expected the movie to be decent and it turns out to be awful. I knew I liked Narnia enough to enjoy two movies full of it’s thinly veiled Christian allegories, stiff child acting, and bad writing, and I was just hoping that Dawn Treader would be interesting enough that my wife and I wouldn’t feel like we wasted our money or our evening. That’s all I wanted.
I figured taking away two of the not-so-good child actors and adding one really good child actor was at least a recipe for a decent movie. Will Poulter was in the amazing movie Son of Rambow, and if you haven’t seen that, do so immediately. He plays cousin Eustace, CS Lewis’ depiction of us logic based folk who don’t have enough faith in talking lions.
Together with Lucy and Edmund, he gets transported to Narnia, the magical land where everyone wears velvet and looks vaguely European. There they meet back up with dreamboat Prince Caspian again and get involved in something…I know it has to do with some swords and a green mist.
Everything this time around felt amateur, from the direction to the cinematography to the visual effects, which were laughable in some scenes. I was surprised that Liam Neeson reprised his role as Aslan, but then I realized that he probably recorded his lines in like two freaking hours and made more than I’ll make for the next couple years, so I don’t blame him.
I know this is a movie for kids, but kids have pretty high BS detectors these days, and with Harry Potters and Tangleds and Tron guys running around, they might not have much interest in watching people on a boat for two hours.
Mainly I’m writing this for the adults who I know want to give this movie a chance. Don’t. Go see Tron Legacy, True Grit, or Tangled.
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John Justice
