The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1988)

Wonderful character development!

Such a frustrating disappointment

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

As far as adaptations of novels go, this is fairly good and very faithful to the source material.However, that's where anything good about this adaptation of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" ends. The initial performances of the children are passable, as is Digory Kirke, but from the moment Lucy enters Narnia, the film goes downhill at break-neck speed. The effects, and I KNOW it was 1988, are absolutely dreadful. The fauns are clearly wearing some sort of furry pair of trousers, the woodland spirits look like (and probably are) people romping about in silk pajamas wearing face paint, in fact, all the mythological creatures look hacky and ridiculous. The Beavers are the worst of all. Rather than making ANY attempts to make the Beavers, key characters in the book, look convincing, the makers seemed to just shove the actors into fat suits, stick some brown fur, ears and tails on them and paint their faces with the most ludicrous make-up I've ever seen. Aslan is portrayed by an apparently robotic lion, which in all fairness looks brilliant, but when he "speaks" the sync is out and it just looks like a bad puppet.But one can look past the poor visuals and write them down to budgeting and whatnot. But the budget should have been enough to cast someone with decent acting skills, because by far the WORST thing about this adaptation is the woman portraying the White Witch. Her "acting" consists of the hammiest, most melodramatic gestures and screaming. Any screen time she has, which is a considerable amount, is cringe-worthy and unbearable. She pretty much ruins the film with her screeching and limb-flailing. In saying that however, none of the performances are noteworthy or even satisfactory. The children started off well, but one can only assume that they were soon bewildered by the stupidity of the effects and acting of the "Narnians" so they just gave up. The Beavers and Mr Tumnus are just awful, and in the ensemble scene towards the end (I will not call it a battle, as children running around with toy guns or wooden swords are more convincing warriors) is perhaps the most unintentionally hilarious piece of celluloid inexistence.I would only recommend this to die-hard C.S. Lewis and Narnia fans. But even they will be disappointed by the way a good adaptation is brought crashing down by the horrendous production values. For anyone else, steer clear of this and save yourself a couple of hours of agony.

So the BBC did not have a multi-million dollar budget. In fact, I doubt it even had a million dollars on its hands to make this movie. People who need an action scene to be entertained will not enjoy this movie. But any Narnia aficionado would be proud to call this 1988 edition of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe the TRUE adaptation of Lewis' masterpiece as opposed to the cheesy & flashy one that was released in 2005.C.S. Lewis was clearly a genius; the producer of the 1988 film obviously recognized this and chose to keep the script of the movie as faithful to the text itself as humanly possible. The producers of the 2005 movie, however, clearly thought that they could come up with something better than his words. Guess what? They were wrong.The criticism of Sophie Wilcox that runs rampant on this site is vomit-inducing. Young Sophie portrayed the role of Lucy with poise and grace, and she delivered each line with the ability of an Academy Award winning actress. All of the comments about her buck teeth and weight are simply not necessary; Wilcox has overcome her awkward preadolescent years and emerged into a beautiful butterfly (check her resume and pictures on google).While there may be some merit to the comments about the cartoon drawn animals and "subpar" acting of other members of the cast, I think it is the imperfections of the movie itself that make it so worth watching. For without the random yelping of Richard Dempsey (Peter) and awkward pauses between scenes, this movie would not provide the comedy or family fun that many seek when renting a film.Overall, this movie deserves a 10 out of 10 for its genuine acting, great story, and comedic relief.

After having read the "Chronicles of Narnia", I always hoped that a film or TV movie would be made capturing the story on screen. When this BBC version came out in the US in January of 1989, I couldn't believe how well it was done. The acting, the music, and the spirit of Narnia were all there and on-target. Of course, Aslan is a mechanical lion, of course, some of the fantastic beasts were animated instead of computer-generated, but the movie still transported me to Narnia, because it had distilled just enough of the magic of C.S. Lewis' work to make it all work. I'm sorry, but if you criticize this film on it's special effects alone, then you are sadly missing a wonderful story. These days, even if there is NO story, films can make hundreds of millions of dollars on computer-generated effects alone. But capturing the spirit of a great work like this doesn't rely on much more than the grand story Lewis intended. Read the books and see if you don't agree that this version is warmer and more heartfelt.

Even though The 'so called' new - brilliant-wonderful-exciting film of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe has come out on DVD and has probably got quite a few votes and fans- I still say, the original will always be a winner- because for one most of the original stuck to the actual book, and didn't try to cheat. The witch in the new film is not angry enough as the other witch in the original. The wolfs didn't speak either in the original film as well. And I also don't think we wanted to see London being bombed down- as that didn't happen in the original. Also they used ordinary actors- not flashy ones who think they can out do the best, and the original film. I apologise to those who love the new film- i do love it its just that I wish they wouldn't try and out do the original- because that will be forgotten.