Never Read The Book, Myself.

This movie had the same effect on me as The Prisoner Of Azkaban, the 1st Harry Potter film I saw. It's a project based on a book series that I not only never read but never really had any interest in.
Yet, after watching the film, I became interested in it.
As a kid, I used to think that sword & sorcery stories were supposed to be more intricate & more mature & more interesting versions of fairy tales. However, as I grew up, I found that the few movies that were made of this genre tended to fall short on either the fantasy or the consistency of the plot (for some reason, the idea of characters interacting with mythic creatures always seemed difficult for script writers to string together).
But The Chronicles of Narnia seemed to be able to aptly pull this off, at least in the 1st part of this film as the major players are introduced. Even more so, IMO, than in Lord Of The Rings.
The characters in Narnia looked just like fantasy characters were meant to look, the story came off as epic as the genre tends to aspire to be & every million dollar denomination was richly visable in the special effects.
While still not a perfect movie, for me, The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe definitely was a surprise in it's over-all quality as a fully integrated movie of magic, metaphor & really cool CGI-enhanced action.



9/10