I swear when I was watching the film I was gonna see Frodo...

And I think I did…

The great thing about giving the special effects project to WETA was you were guaranteed to have great effects. The bad thing is there is a risk WETA will be uncreative and reuse the special effects from The Lord of the Rings, which were great, but have already been seen by the general audience. Unfortunately, they reused the special effects. The scenery of big battle scene at the end of the film was an almost exact duplicate of the plains outside Minas Tirith in The Return of The King. Where's the creativity? I swear WETA has a disk of scenery, and when they get the order "grasslands!" they just open a file and do minimal work to improve the product! Don't get me wrong, I loved the special effects, but I was looking for something new, something different, something like the reaction I got from seeing Minas Tirith for the first time. Unfortunately, they did not deliver on this great opportunity.

Another element of the special effects is make-up, which was a failure. Going back to the battle scene, the makeup and artistry there was not top notch. I swear Tilda Swinton, the actress that plays the White Witch, looked like a man. The White Witch may be a crazy queen trying to rule Narnia with her REALLY big army, but that doesn't mean she has to look like Elrond from Lord of the Rings! She is supposed to look like a ruler, not a man!

At the beginning of the movie when I got the first glimpse of the White Witch, I was about to cry out "Mommy?" in front of the whole audience, because that's what she looked like! She wasn't the LEAST bit scary; she looked like a normal person who, if dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, would not stand out in a crowd. The make-up was non-existent and very poorly done. Unfortunately, I think that greatly wrecked the mood the White Witch created, which could never be recovered in the movie.

But the blame of the White Witch looking like a mother does not solely lie on the make-up team. Swinton did not do the best acting job she could. I know at the beginning she was suppose to seem sweet and loving to Edmond, BUT SHE WAS STILL SUPPOSE TO BE EVIL! What happened to the "I'm clearly hiding something and you (Edmond) are too stupid to figure it out!" voice? She needed to hint at the beginning of the film that she was evil, and her acting did not show that wickedness.

Moving on from the White Witch, we have the Pevensie children. The children did an over-the-top performance in the film. When they were suppose to be scared, they acted scared. When the script required fear, they convinced the audience they were scared. I think all of these children will have great movie careers and will make many more movies. I especially liked the comedic timing by William Moseley, the actor that plays Peter. Many of the jokes in the film do not sound funny on paper (as I soon discovered trying to type out some of the lines) but that just made it all the more harder for Moseley to make the audience laugh. He rose to the challenge, and did an outstanding job.

I do not believe the children were able to achieve the performance they did without the help of the director, Andrew Adamson. Funny enough, Andrew is a Son of Adam (get it? Adamson? Son of Adam?) I have to admit when I found out Adamson's last job was director of Shrek, my first reaction was "Why in the name of all things Narnian would the producers pick HIM? Is this a joke?" After watching the film, I retract all my previous reactions. I apologise to Adamson (if you are reading this, I think that is so cool!) and I now have faith in the films. Adamson was able to take four children and direct them into stars.

But that is not all Adamson did. He was able to show the symbolism of the film with outstanding clarity, something that would have made CS Lewis proud. I had a great time finding all the symbolism that was in the film; Edmond continually standing away from the other children when they first entered Narnia, the contrast of light and dark with the children and the White Witch…even something as small as Edmond's change of clothes was evident, from scruffy-looking when prisoner to the White Witch, to the look of royalty at Aslan's camp.

The last topic of the review is probably the most important. The script of the film is what makes a movie great. I was very happy to see actual lines from the book used in the movie, and I think this really pleased all long-time fans of Narnia. The scenes not in the book helped create the mood of the film, and I think if CS Lewis wrote these scenes, he would have written them very similar to what was in the film.

Alas, my word count is up. As a conclusion, I have to say I liked this movie very much. It had a couple of sore spots, with an almost duplication of Lord of the Rings, and a s/he make-up job of the White Witch. However the acting of the children and symbolism really make up for all the faults. I give this movie a 4 ½ stars out of 5.