trooperjac

The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe remains the best of the Narnia movies so far. That story is a rightful classic and fondly remembered by kids of all ages. The movie version was fabulous and a lot of that was down to the obvious chemistry between the young actors playing the Pevensies.

Dawn Treader suffers slightly when relying on the two younger siblings for it's emotional center despite Georgie & Skandar turning in good performances. The film doesn't quite feel the same without Susan & Peter but I know it would have been a travesty for them to appear in this film. I found Will Poulter's acting a touch overblown even for a fantasy movie but these are minor points as he come's good in the end.

All in all I enjoyed the movie very much. A proper boy's own adventure (& girl's) with great photography and fabulous fantasy locations. The ending was pretty moving with Lucy & Edmund saying goodbye to Narnia for the last time.

Seems they are filming The Magician's Nephew next which looks cool.

After reading the reviews I really wasn't expecting anything from this movie but I had absolutely nothing else to watch. Actually I'm glad I did watch it as there are some nice ol' skool spooky moments in the movie, I would say it's worth a watch on a cold dark night.

Definitely a straight to video movie done on the cheap, the actors were a mixed bag of low level TV actors and failed movie stars. Teri Polo was actually quite good in the lead and was a charming presence. Most of the others were acceptable and a few were just plain awful. The female cop and the landlord stand out as terrible for me but I couldn't decide if it was the actors or the direction at fault.

It gets of to a clichéd start with all the usual creepy happenings. There is some nice photography in a few scenes but it's obvious the production didn't have a large budget. The last 20 minutes turn into some 70s schlock horror B movie with some film school quality make-up effects. Definitely gets to the so bad it's good stage.

The plot didn't make a lot of sense at the end but if you make it that far you won't really care.

Good things first, some very nice cinematography of the landscapes. Cool looking deserted town that looks like something from a nuclear holocaust. Now that's out of the the way, on to the bad...

Clichéd characters. The Ellie character is just plain annoying and whilst I'm not a prude her behaviour just invited trouble - she's in an unknown country surrounded by strangers and acts like a complete whore. The good guy character hints at some promise but is taken out of the equation too easily. No inventiveness applied here, nothing you haven't seen a million times. Plus the female leads look like famine victims, especially Ellie - neither of them would have had the strength to fight off any kind of attack. I don't know if this is what Hollywood considers sexy nowadays but if so you can keep it.

Only rent if there is absolutely nothing else.