Latest Trip to Narnia a Voyage Worth Taking
It is 1943 and thanks to the ongoing war Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) Pevensie are stuck hidden away at their cousin Eustace Scrubb’s (Will Poulter) home in Cambridge while older siblings Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell) are off living their lives. They’re bored. More than that, they are tired of their selfish and self-involved relative, wishing they could once again make use of themselves in a meaningful sort of way like they did when they were High King and High Queen of Narnia along with their brother and sister.
Georgie Henley, Ben Barnes, Laura Brent and Skandar Keynes in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader © 20th Century Fox
As if on queue, an upstairs bedroom painting of a strange vessel comes alive while the three children are arguing, filling it with water to the point they are completely submerged. Swimming to the surface, Edmund and Lucy, along with the annoying Eustace, find themselves in the middle of the Narnian Ocean, a massive ship sailing their way, its sailors leaping off its bow to offer assistance. Once aboard the Dawn Treader they are reunited with Caspian (Ben Barnes), now King of all Narnia, and with Reepicheep (voiced by Simon Pegg), the diminutive warrior mouse who assisted them so valiantly such a short time ago.
But why have they returned? What has The Great Lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) planned for them? And will this adventure into the unknown be their last? All these questions and more are searching for an answer, every person aboard the Dawn Treader, including Edmund, Lucy, Caspian and Eustace, about to face their most difficult crisis yet as their inner most desires and fantasies will tempt them to embrace, and ultimately succumb, to darkness.
Based on the third novel in author C.S. Lewis’ beloved series, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is without a doubt the most satisfying and enjoyable cinematic adaptation yet. New director Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist, The World is Not Enough) ground the proceedings in a way that feels vibrant and alive, while returning screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, along with newcomer Michael Petroni, have done a much better job of streamlining events and giving them a bit more focus than we saw from either The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Prince Caspian. It is a fun film that runs under two hours and more or less gets the job done, and while it is far from perfect as family entertainments go this one is of a much finer pedigree than I anticipated beforehand.
The best thing here is that Apted and company go out of their way to hit the ground running and dispense with as much of the useless bits as possible. There is a threat to Narnia. Edmund and Lucy are needed to help solve the riddle behind it. So is Eustace. Caspian must stop living in past tragedies and become the forward-thinking leader his people require. All will be challenged. All will rise to meet said challenge in order to set things right.
That’s really about it. Yes there is a lot of caterwauling about green mists and seven swords and lost lords. Yes the White Witch (still played by the sinisterly infatuating Tilda Swinton) will return to vex Edmund for one final time. Yes Aslan is still prowling around telling everyone to be patient and to have, you guessed it faith; in their countrymen, in their friends, in their future, but mostly in themselves. Yes there is a lot more going on, at least from standpoints somewhat a bit off from the center, but none of that matters all that much at the end of the day. There is trouble. There is a mystery. It is up to our returning heroes, and Eustace, to solve it. That’s really it.
And that’s just fine. Keeping things simple is the best thing that has ever happened to this series. Apted keeps the momentum continuously sailing onward, rarely dillydallying shaving off the more useless bits and pieces keeping things as economic as possible. He makes sure the characters themselves stay front and center, their ultimate journey to self-discovery the single most important one of them all.
It’s not perfect. There are moments when things tend to veer a little off-course, most of them having to do with Eustace. As a character, I was never all that fond of him in the book when I read it all those years ago and now as an adult I’m even less inclined to like him now. While his transformation is rightly the most drastic (heck, at one point he’s turned into a dragon as a punishment in hopes of making him a better human being) I can’t say I cared a single lick either about him or it. He drove me up a wall, and whenever the film pushed him front and center, especially early on when he’s having duels and the whatnot with Reepicheep, I kind of found myself tuning out.
More than that, while the religious overtones have been dulled, it is hard to get past at times that much of this can tend to play like an extended Sunday School lesson. The worst of that comes at the very end, and while I know it’s almost all directly translated word-from-word from the book itself that doesn’t make much of Aslan’s dialogue any less didactic or overbearing. At a certain point we get it and pardon me if I don’t want it rammed down my throat, my gag reflex just not able to handle the pressure.
All that being so I’m willing to give a break to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader mainly because much of the journey itself is just so darn enjoyable. This is the first film in the series that seems to embrace the magical nature of Lewis’ world, the first that finds real joy in a land of talking mice, oceans filled with gigantic sea serpents and place where a boy can become a dragon and be made all the better a person for it. It is the first one where I really felt myself smile that same way I did when I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a youngster, the first one where that same sense of wonder embraced me and held me, at times at least, rapturously within its arms. It is a movie where awe wasn’t just a three-letter word but was instead a sensory reflex I could revel in, making the final product cinematic fare fit for the entire family.
I do have one minor side note. Like Clash of the Titans, The Last Airbender and a few other 2010 releases before it, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has been post-converted into 3D. While this is undoubtedly the best post-3D conversion I have seen up to now, I would still strongly urge viewers to skip paying the surcharge and search out 2D showings of the film instead. If anything, the 3D is a detriment, making the film visually darker in a way that is noticeably distracting. So, please, save your money and don’t view it that way.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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