The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Right then - I'm just in from seeing it. Verdict? Not perfect, but still quite good. All the elements were there, but some of the magic was missing.

• Acting was quite good - all the children were quite respectable, and there were star turns from Tilda Swinton (the White Witch), Liam Neeson (Aslan), and Ray Winstone (Mr. Beaver - when he referred to Aslan as the 'top geezer', I nearly busted a gut).
• Special effects were middling to good - quite uneven in fact, which was odd. Some things, like Aslan himself, were spectacular, but other characters and effects looked a little dated. Given the amount of money that went into this film, and the team behind it (Weta Workshop), this seems quite strange.
• The scriptwriters stayed very close to the novel - which I suppose was not hard to do, given that the novel is only about 170 pages of largish print. Not like Harry Potter, in that respect, where huge swathes of narrative had to be chopped.
• The Christian allegory was handled quite subtly, I thought. If anything, I worried about this aspect the most, fearing that viewers might be hit over the head with Aslan/Jesus parallels.

All in all, a faithful and well-executed adaptation of the novel. Despite this, however, it was not as magical as I hoped it might be. Of course, films like these rarely are. I guess I've been spoiled by the Lord of the Rings films in that respect.

In a nutshell? This first of the Narnia films (for there will doubtless be more) wasn't a patch on LOTR, but was rather better than any of the Harry Potters. So there you are.