The third movie in the saga, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (whew) was a very entertaining chapter in this story. It's got all the elements that a good fantasy movie needs. I just wish that something wasn't missing. I don't know what was missing, but what could have been a fantastic sword and sorcery story wound up being merely a vanilla, run-of-of-the-mill, family fantasy. It's not a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it never stretched my imagination. I have only read the first book, The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe, and really liked it. When I saw the movie, though, I was underwhelmed by it. Kind of the same feeling here, but without the joy of reading the novel. The story moves well, the story is well written, the effects are beautiful and believable, but something is missing. It's as if there was no real dramatic "omph", I didn't really care what happened to the characters.
The acting was, for lack of a better term, very British. Low key, under-emphatic...British. it was like someone told the actors,"look, you're British, so scale it back a bit."(thanks Eddie Izzard). I wish the director had just wound them up and let them go, it could have been great. Instead we get, unfortunately, a merely good fantasy piece.
One last question I have: what happened to Disney's involvement? The first movie was good too, but it had a sense of style and, what appeared to be, commitment to the movie. This one just felt like 20th Century Fox was going though the motions to finish this particular trilogy. Visually stunning, but the soul of the film is not there. Fans of the books deserve better. 7/10.
Tomorrow's movie: Russell Crowe (yay) in another Ridley Scott film, Robin Hood. See you then, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!
No comments:
Post a Comment