The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) Critic Reviews

A movie of intelligence and power, of beauty, universality and largeness of spirit.Read the full review

What's best about it is that it seems real by the logic of childhood - it looks as things SHOULD look, if kids had it their way.Read the full review

What is lightly sketched in the novel, where much is left to the imagination, blossoms into full-blown, richly detailed life in the movie.Read the full review

Well told, handsome, stirring and loads of fun.Read the full review

An entertaining, emotional, and surprisingly intimate movie--an epic saga of fauns and talking (Cockney) beavers and evil sorceresses and triumphal resurrections and massive, sweeping battles that nonetheless feels … small.Read the full review

The next two hours might not have quite delivered on that initial promise of wonder - we grown-ups, being heavy, are not so easily swept away by visual tricks - except when I looked away from the screen at the faces of breathless and wide-eyed children, my own among them, for whom the whole experience was new, strange, disturbing and delightful.Read the full review

An array of supporting craftspeople pull the viewer into a credible alternative world, even if the film itself is more prosaic than inspiring.Read the full review

Generations of readers have found The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe to be a gripping adventure that reaches well beyond its religious underpinnings, and this robust version respects both aspects and finds the same winning balance of excitement and meaning.Read the full review

A gracefully subtle metaphor about life's Deep Magic has become a war film; what was a one-chapter battle toward the end of the book is now a ripsnorting Armageddon that looks like something Hieronymus Bosch might dream up after a heavy meal.Read the full review