Directed by Andrew Adamson
Rating: **
It's delightful to re-visit your childhood fantasies, specially when the revisitation is done with such enchanting élan. The Chronicles Of Narnia is that frozen moment in time when life's most precious experiences and emotions de-thaw and flow in a fluent motion of elemental enjoyment.
The Chronicles Of Narnia lacks the weighty wonderment of Harry Potter or The Lord Of Rings. But it has a certain zing to its narration.
A fable-like fantasy about four kids from London during World War 2 who find themselves transported into a strange and exciting country filled with talking animal and blustering witches, Chronicles Of Narnia conveys a magical but manageable epic sweep.
The two climate schemes, with icy winter being superimposed by a spring-like gait in-between, enhances the feeling of being transported into a realm of enchanting extravagance.
The four kids at the helm, all written and played at varying pitches of fantasy and release, and some stupendously professional animation take care of the rest.If you've read C.S. Lewis' novel you may not be fully content with the way the writer's imagination has been concretized on screen.
But it's never easy to bring alive the fantasy element in fiction. Director Andrew Adamson does a decent job of it. He's specially adept at mingling the animal and human kingdoms as the yin and yang of civilization.
The sense of spellbinding adventure spills out in controlled measures. The Chronicles Of Narnia doesn't overwhelm your senses with visual spectacle. Nor does it go all-out to rivet you to your seats with scene after scene of full-on F-X . The approach to the fantasia-material is more deliberate and measured.
No one, least of all the director, is in a hurry to resolve the battle between the bitter witch(Tilda Swinton) and the benign animals who take on her might with the help of the four youngsters from potter space. By the time it's done, the audience and the fable are one...and won.
