Pulling stuff out of nowhere and piling it on without any good sense can be a stylistic choice. Recently I watched Brian De Palma�s magnificent �Phantom of the Paradise,� in which the whole point is to keep throwing stuff in. �Faust,� glam rock, �Phantom of the Opera,� disfigurement, horror movie clich�s, cocaine, deals with the devil, pop music satire, even �The Picture of Dorian Gray� (or, in this case, �The Security Camera Film of Dorian Gray�). But anyone who knows anything knows that what works for De Palma doesn�t usually work for Disney.
Anyway, I suppose I should mention the religious allegory of �Narnia.� It�s the same muscle-bound Christianity that has been running through the other �LOTR� movies and some of the �Matrix� films, in which the Christ figure demands utter vilification of his enemies and answers violence, for the most part, with even greater violence. There�s not much in the way of mercy and mysterious ways. Compare this to �Andrei Roublev,� which the Vatican named as one of the best movies ever made about religion. In it, men spend 3 hours being casually, abominably violent to one another, only to have God blow away their feeble attempts at might�not with a lightning bolt or a column of flame�but with one tiny bit of mercy. But I digress.
And, of course, ENOUGH. I�ve seen 9 � hours of this already, not to mention �Troy� and �Kingdom of Gladiators,� and I was never all that impressed to begin with. If you haven�t seen any of the movies I�ve just listed, or the last four �Harry Potter� movies, �Narnia� will still be fresh to you. Or maybe you can�t get enough of this stuff and don�t need it to change. I understand. But, for me, if this franchise is going to succeed with however many more books it has to film, it�s going to need something more than four present-day kids. Otherwise it will be indistinguishable from its imitators.
Finished Sunday, December 11th, 2005
Copyright � 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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