I went to see this film today. I tried not to draw any comparisons to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, although it's nearly impossible to do that now. This was produced by Disney, and the books were written towards a younger reading audience, from what I've been told, so it was a fantasy movie made for a younger audience. The movie wasn't dumbed down or anything, it was an enjoyable story. I couldn't help but notice how much the actress playing the White Queen resembled Cate Blanchett, who played the elf queen Galadriel in the LOTR. There were other comparisons I made too, but I won't be able to enjoy any type of fantasy movie if I keep referring back to the LOTR, so I took it all with a grain of salt. The younger actors playing the four siblings at the center of the story were good enough, I guess, and I don't usually enjoy child actors. The younger sister was the most enjoyable...she discovered the wardrobe first, and inside the entrance to Narnia. The opening sequence, taking place during the bombing of London in WWII, was not made to be too detailed, which I thought was the right choice for the kids.
Someone told me there were some religious overtones to this story, but I'm not the kind of person who would catch any kind of overtones during the first showing of a movie. I would have gone into it without that knowledge and probably not have noticed much of anything besides what the story was directly telling me. There was a point dealing with not being treacherous or doing wrong and being able to be resurrected because of it, and I suppose it could be compared to the resurrection of Jesus, but I simply took it as the power of good over evil, which is interpreted in many ways in many religions. Well, anyway, I enjoyed the movie. And the playful bickering between the talking beaver couple as they were trying to help the young heroes was amusing.
