I so wanted to love this film, and to be fair, there are many reasons to do so, but at the end I felt ever so slightly... underwhelmed. I found it charming, meticulously crafted, a visual treat, and very well acted, but I never quite fell in love with it.

The actors are superbly cast, especially Swinton, Henley and MacAvoy. After so many productions of screaming, over-the-top Witches, we finally have one who can project menace through utter, icy composure. The older children are all solid, and the casting of Peter as somewhat older than Lewis wrote him makes his role in the final battle a bit easier to believe.

Production design is painstakingly thorough and, in the case of the White Witch, strikingly original (Aslan's army pales in comparison to her ice palace, though Cair Paravel makes a strong, if brief, impression). The New Zealand landscapes are used effectively, and somehow manage to avoid looking like Middle-earth warmed (or is it chilled?) over. Father Christmas looked nothing like what I had expected, which may have been the wisest choice the filmmakers could have made.

The screenplay's additions to the original are mostly effective: the London Blitz, Edmund's extended emotional journey, even the relay of crucial information via the trees, in a sequence anticipating "Prince Caspian." The only deletion I truly missed was the Witch's punishment of the small party of creatures celebrating Christmas--maybe the screenwriters drew the line at petrifying baby squirrels, or maybe they just wanted to give Rupert Everett's fox more to do. The frozen river escape is gratuitous, but fun.

The special effects work was dodgy, some brilliant (Tumnus's non-human parts), some incredibly fake-looking (a straight-forward green-screen shot was painfully obvious). The CGI talking animals at times look disturbing close to the world of "Shrek."

Most of all, though, I think what was off was the pacing. As the movie made its way farther into the narrative, some scenes seemed rushed, others oddly drawn-out. Maugrim's attack on Susan and Lucy at Aslan's camp felt dragged-out. The liberation of the Witch's captives seemed perfunctory. Susan's last-minute rescue of Edmund from danger was so mundanely staged and edited it drew inappropriate laughter from the audience. Harry Gregson-Williams's score, which takes such bold and exciting risks through the earlier scenes, resorts to cliche during the final battle and coronation scenes.

Perhaps I simply need to see the movie again, now that I know what to expect. As with "The Lord of the Rings," a visualization that fails to conform to my own imagination of the text can be appreciated better once the initial shock is past. I truly do believe that this is a very good movie, and a worthy adaptation. I'm just waiting for that elusive spark to set it on fire for me.