movie: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Dec. 21st, 2010 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI made sure to see this in 2D. I've seen two movies in 3D so far, and until someone makes another animated film as well-done as Coraline, I don't wish to see any more.
This was the best of the three Chronicles of Narnia films in this series to date, largely because it's based on the strongest storyline - an episodic quest with a clear destination point - and because it holds the extraneous battle scenes to a minimum, instead of wallowing the whole movie in them. The battle with the sea serpent is too long and dramatically dire - in the book the serpent is sort of lumpen and the heroes just push it off the ship - but even it is held within some bounds.
Most of the adventures of the book are there, but somewhat disordered and pushed out of shape. It's as if the movie had been written by someone who'd read the book a long time ago and didn't remember it very well. One of the most memorable scenes of the book is when Eustace turns into a dragon, so in the movie he spends more than half the running time as one, and even gets to battle the sea serpent in that shape.
A couple of sine quibus non of bad fantasy stories have been injected into the plot, in a not very successful attempt to turn this into a lousy movie: a running villain in the form of a green mist, and a "collect the coupons" plot token in the form of the seven swords of the seven missing lords, all of which need to be collected before the characters can send off to the scriptwriter for the ending.
There are no Telmarine villains in this story, so the acting is fairly mediocre. Caspian is bland. Edmund and Lucy are singularly unconvincing in the slightly overblown temptation scenes. Eustace is pretty good at being annoying. The Dufflepuds are modestly funny. Reepicheep comes off as if he'd make a good comic duo partner with Puss-in-Boots from Shrek 2.
And that's about all I can think of to say. It's a movie, neither great nor terrible.
Previous reviews:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
This was the best of the three Chronicles of Narnia films in this series to date, largely because it's based on the strongest storyline - an episodic quest with a clear destination point - and because it holds the extraneous battle scenes to a minimum, instead of wallowing the whole movie in them. The battle with the sea serpent is too long and dramatically dire - in the book the serpent is sort of lumpen and the heroes just push it off the ship - but even it is held within some bounds.
Most of the adventures of the book are there, but somewhat disordered and pushed out of shape. It's as if the movie had been written by someone who'd read the book a long time ago and didn't remember it very well. One of the most memorable scenes of the book is when Eustace turns into a dragon, so in the movie he spends more than half the running time as one, and even gets to battle the sea serpent in that shape.
A couple of sine quibus non of bad fantasy stories have been injected into the plot, in a not very successful attempt to turn this into a lousy movie: a running villain in the form of a green mist, and a "collect the coupons" plot token in the form of the seven swords of the seven missing lords, all of which need to be collected before the characters can send off to the scriptwriter for the ending.
There are no Telmarine villains in this story, so the acting is fairly mediocre. Caspian is bland. Edmund and Lucy are singularly unconvincing in the slightly overblown temptation scenes. Eustace is pretty good at being annoying. The Dufflepuds are modestly funny. Reepicheep comes off as if he'd make a good comic duo partner with Puss-in-Boots from Shrek 2.
And that's about all I can think of to say. It's a movie, neither great nor terrible.
Previous reviews:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
