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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
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Manufacturer: Homevision
Find all by Homevision
Directed By: Marilyn Fox
Audience Rating: Unrated
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Theatrical Release: December 4, 1988
Average Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
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Retail Price: $19.95
Online Sale Price: $19.95
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Starring: Sophie Cook, Richard Dempsey, Barbara Kellerman, Sophie Wilcox, Jeffrey S. Perry
Lucy, Peter, Susan, and Edmund find themselves transported to the enchanted world of Narnia after wandering into an old wardrobe in a countryside estate. In Narnia the children discover an evil White Witch who has turned her enemies to stone and placed permanent winter over all the land. According to legend, the brave children are to be lead by Aslan the Great Lion to destroy the witch and transform Narnia back into the paradise it was meant to be. But the evil witch has plans of her own. Digitally remastered for the first time and presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 sound!
User Submitted The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe Reviews
June 12, 2007
wrong item-sent back
I did not intend to order THIS item (silly me- wrong title). I sent it back. No results.
May 10, 2007
ugh!
even for the biggest narnia fan...this entire series BLOWS...it is long, boring, drawn out....drastically different from the book and the special effects are all but non existant. if you get it to have as a part of a narnia collection fine...buy it and have it and let it sit on a shelf...don't watch it!
November 26, 2006
WTF was the BBC thinking?
Hey everyone,
well I bought this movie 3 nights ago and was really excited to watch it. Tonight, I got the chance to watch them and i'm sorry to say: it sucked.
I watched this with my brother and we ended up turning the movie off 51 minutes into it(this is out of 169 minutes btw)!
Some things wrong with it was:
1)bad filming
2)bad casting(except for Peter,Susan,the professor and that's basically it. I read another review where a woman descibed lucy as a "chubby, buck-toothed" child- i'm sorry, but that is pretty acurate. She was really distracting, my brother and I made fun of her for much of the movie, which is why we even made it to 51 minutes!)
3)People in Animal suits- reallly? everyone could tell they're not, truthfully this didn't bother me that much- it's just i'm apart of the generation of today so i like CGI way better.
Now some good things:
1)it sticks to the story
2)the acting is pretty good (i too am an actor, so this might be a lil' too nice: the girl who plays lucy(just not who i pictured from the books) is actually not that bad!
3)the set is pretty good for the time (late 80's)
basically, i wanna return it b/c i didn't like it for the reasons aforementioned. However, if you generallly like BBC stuff and want a Narnia movie (unlike the recent one)that is truthful to the books, then this is the one to get (if unsure, just rent it beforehand)
July 13, 2006
People in animal suits?
I love the Chronicles of Narnia and have read them many many times. I thought that a movie would be a great idea, and even though this version is truer to the story than the new Walden Media film, it looks cheap. It was a good idea produced when technology couldn't handle the necessities of the story. People in animal suits? Nice effort, but I was turned off by the bad attempts at acting and the even worse attempts at making it look realistic. Don't waste your money on the BBC. It's not worth it.
April 25, 2006
Conserning The, BBC "REMASTERED" DVD Version
I wanted to love the new movie version of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, I really and truly did. I even convinced myself to purchase the double disc, special edition of the new film, hopping upon hope to find a new appreciation of the film through another viewing, and/or the behind the scenes extras (as has happened with a few films in the past; The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, for instance, even though I still find the BBC mini series of that, better, I now like the film MUCH more then I did upon first viewing)...
I actually, almost, had myself deluded into thinking that the movie and its unnecessary need to veer away from the book in both words and events, wasn't, so bad...
Then a neat thing happened to me, while researching another movie, I discovered that there was a REMASTERED edition of the original BBC mini series, on DVD coming to Canada on April 25, 2006 from Morningstar Entertainment (and already available in the U.S. through Image) and I happened to luck out and find a place that had the U.S. version in stock, for a relatively decent price (19.99 Canadian funds + tax) here in Canada.
So, I scrapped some money together (payday wasn't till Friday, and it was only Monday) picked it up, played it as soon as I got home, and suddenly, the mind laps that had me thinking that the movie wasn't so bad, was gone, for here was the real story of the wondrous land of Narnia, come to life, in all of it's glorious verse and imagery, and with no pointless need for veering from the original source material, to achieve this.
As for the newly remastered picture, well, there's still a slight bit of the ghosting that had plagued the original DVD, but the picture is much clearer, colours are much more vibrant (although, on occasion, the colour saturation is so strong that it almost looks like it had been colourized, but not enough to ruin the experience, on the contrary, as it tends to give the whole thing a more fairy tale look) and the White Witch, actually has a white, instead of off grey, complexion (which in itself is a great improvement over the older disc).
Okay, granted the F/X's are kind of hooky by today's, "Lord Of The Rings", standards, but what it lacks in flash, it more then makes up for in heart (where as the movie, is the exact opposite, having all the flash that money can buy, but very little of the heart of the original story).
So if flashy F/X are all that you crave, then I guess the new movie is for you, but if you want to feel like a kid again, feel the magic that reading the books for the first time instilled within you, then the BBC mini series is the way to go.
Here's hopping that the rest of the BBC Narnia mini series get the remastered treatment, and soon :)
March 18, 2006
Don't be fooled
While they stick to the story, and it would be entertaining for kids under 8, any adult who unwittingly purchases this for themselves will be surely disappointed. The acting is stilted, especially the girl playing Lucy, who was so awful (the teeth are completely distracting) that I nearly shut the movie off after she opened her mouth. Coupled with special effects that would be subpar even for a high school av class, what you wind up with is movie no grownup should waste there time on. If your kids can follow stories and you don't want to expose them to much violence, this is fine. If you don't need training wheels on your bike, you are better off skipping this one.
March 1, 2006
The Lion, the Witch, and the BBC
Last December, C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" followed in the footsteps of the "Lord of the Rings Trilogy," with a gleaming new big-screen adaptation.
And despite the new movie's presence, it's worth taking a trip back to the 1988 adaptation of Lewis's book, produced by the BBC. It's evenly divided between good and bad -- good scripting and some good acting, but also some poor acting and sketchy direction.
The four Pevensie children arrive in the country, at the start of World War II. Despite the eccentric but friendly professor (Michael Aldridge) who lives there, they're all bored. And during a game of hide-and-seek, Lucy (Sophie Wilcox) slips into an old wardrobe -- and finds that the back of it opens into a magical, snowy forest land called Narnia. She encounters a friendly faun, but when she arrives back home, she finds that none of her siblings believe her.
But soon Lucy and her siblings find their way through -- not knowing that peevish Edmund (Jonathan R. Scott) has already allied himself to the evil White Witch (Barbara Kellerman) who keeps Narnia locked in winter. She's especially desperate, because Narnia is beginning to thaw out, now that leonine Aslan is coming back to it, and the Pevensie kids have shown up to fulfil an old prophecy. But the Witch won't go down without a massive battle -- and one that might destroy the lion-messiah himself.
"The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" is a mixed bag -- it has more or less equal measures of good and bad. What it also has is deep fidelity to Lewis's original book, which was one of the first major fantasies to get widespread attention. And that's definitely an important detail, since the spirit of the book could easily have been lost.
The filmmakers obviously did their homework, crafting the script and dialogue to be close to Lewis's novel. And it's a credit that they pulled off some lines that could have sounded idiotic ("You're not dead, Aslan!" "Do I look dead?") in the wrong hands. They also did an excellent job of changing atmosphere, shifting from the stodgy English country house to the airy frozen Narnia, with its castles and dewy wildlands.
Unfortunately, the special effects haven't aged well. They were state of the art at the time, but now they look quite cheesy and low budget, with a few exceptions -- the scene where Lucy restores various "statued" people to life is pretty good. The other stuff ranged from primitive bluescreen to an enormous puppet playing Aslan. It's a good puppet, and remarkably convincing physically, but it still makes Aslan look like he has a wicked case of arthritis.
The acting is also divided between good and bad. Scott is particularly good as the "bad boy" Edmund, who ends up falling in with the Witch, especially when he turns on his evil mentor. He is accompanied by some good acting from Sophie Cook as Susan, and Richatd Dempsey as Peter, who also has to do a convincing battle with a werewolf. The weak links are Wilcox, who speaks most of her lines in a whine, and Kellerman, who laughs madly, coos and shrieks, and generally hams it up like a lunatic.
While the new version of "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" has captured the imaginations of moviegoers, the BBC version is still worth taking a look at.
February 18, 2006
A more faithful version
I must admit, I fell asleep in my first viewing. It drags a lot especially when Mrs. Beaver is packing food. The mythic characters did not look that well on screen since they looked like giant mascots. Edmund is taller than Peter. Lucy is not as cute as the Lucy of the 2005 Disney Walden adaptation. Aslan's voice does not fit much. But still, I like this version because it is the version that has more soul in it. It is more faithful to book though it lacked the grandeur of it.
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