WakenPayne
I haven't read any of the Narnia books so the only real thing I have to go on is the Disney movies. However, I did watch this because I did find the effects at times unintentionally hilarious but I decided to just watch this the whole way through because of a few reasons, one was that Tom Baker was in it and that I did like the story of the Disney movies so I'd just see right past the rather cheap creature effects (I have to specify creature effects because other things like the set design is actually quite good) and, the story isn't that bad.The story is that a bullied girl named Jill Pole meets up with the kid from The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader (I did have to fill in the blanks for that but aside from that, I think you can generally watch it without the others in mind and get the gist of it) and while running away from the bullies they manage to get themselves in Narnia There Jill is told by Aslan that they have to find Prince Caspian's son Rillian who had been seduced away from Narnia to god knows where by a woman at the same spot where a serpent killed his mother. They must follow four signs to free the prince but with the help of a half man half frog named Puddleglum (Tom Baker).I'll quickly go down what I didn't like. Well, the effects in places do look cheap, with the exception of Aslan and maybe the centaurs. I do feel that the villain of The Green Witch should have been played with a bit more subtlety because even at the beginning when she directs them to the Giant's City, it's clear that she has villainous intents - the same can be said for the Giants wanting to eat humans and Marsh-wiggles - I mean there I didn't work it out as fast as the Green Witch but about halfway through I thought "So they offer the kids all they could ever want from a nice bed to sleep on, all the toys they could want and more then enough FOOD" they even say to Jill when she asks to eat something from them that she's growing and needs to be fattened up.Aside from that I did like the basis of the story and while I did just criticize the acting before the main players actually do a decent enough job. The set design is really good and while some elements are worth criticizing the effort put into it is there. The only real complaint I have with the writing is that at the beginning of the movie with the bullies - all they do to Jill is just chant "POLE!" at her. I was bullied at school and I know that they would have probably done a bit more then just chant her last name over and over without anything else thrown in, I think that thy should have been more realistically written, but aside from that and parts of the acting and writing not being that subtle I don't think I have a single complaint with the story.I would say that while I haven't read the books, this is an okay watch and I will wait another year to see the remake in 2016 but even so this does have some good things going for it. It's a little hard to explain in the sense that it has it's own charm to it that while some may consider it slow paced I personally don't have that many complaints with the story or the acting from the main players.
Bonnie O'Connor
The Silver Chair is one of my favorite stories of the Narnia series. The messages are powerful, the adventures are intense, and the ending bitter-sweet (and desirable). Mostly it's about Jill and Eustace being called out of their world, and with the help of a marshwiggle called Puddleglum, they go to find a lost Narnian prince who is being held captive by the Lady of the Green Kirtle (also known as the Queen of the Underland). Along the way they encounter giants, unfriendly weathers, and underground creatures. The plot sounds great, but the movie couldn't quite live up to the intenseness of the story. I don't blame the directors or writers, especially since there was not much CGI back then, so everyone had to dress in animal costumes, use a robotic lion for Aslan, and the special effects for the giants vs the main characters was not the best. The robotic Aslan looked very very awkward. Whenever it talked its jaw would drop at the wrong times, it barely ever sat or lay down, and the character (compared to the first movie) always seemed angry. Sure he's considered to not be a tame lion, but he wasn't always angry, but neither was he always pleased with everything. Maybe I'm just being picky, but I feel more of his anger than kindness or compassion.The only other thing that bothers me is the cheesy acting. I would have to say that Puddleglum and Prince Rillian are the only characters I enjoy who aren't over acting, but the rest of the actors make no sense in their acting. Take for example at the beginning when the bullies are "picking' on Jill, all they're doing is cornering her and yelling her last name, "Pole! Pole! Pole!" What are they making fun of? Are they making fun of her name being the same as a telephone pole? And when they're chasing her, what's the purpose? Do they just want to continue shouting Pole at her? That's one of many parts that always confused me. But the only overacting to rival all of them is the Lady of the Green Kirtle herself. It's Barbara Kellerman; and we've already seen her as the overacting White Witch and the Hag from the previous films, so she's pretty much not playing a different role. I would have liked it better if the directors got someone else for the part, but I guess there was a low budget, so I'll let that pass. However, what I won't let pass is that she's way over the top in her acting and being over dramatic. It almost felt as if she thought that the only way anybody would get the idea of how evil her character was, was for her to go over the top in her monologues, screaming, run around a lot, and change her voice around from deep and angry to sweet and soft. True that's what she does in the book, but she had a way of containing her wrath by being calm and cool until she couldn't at the very end. In the movie she goes in and out of frustration and sweetness making me confused.I occasionally watch it, but I still think that it's a bit cheesy and could have been better improved (at least in the acting if not in the special effects).
rickchriss
C.S. Lewis's masterpiece certainly deserves better than this. This production occupies a narrow range beginning at quite poor and topping out at lower mediocre.Let's begin with the acting. The principal lead characters, Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole ("Scrub and Pole" might have been a bluegrass banjo duo, which probably would have been more entertaining than the acting), were portrayed woodenly, as if these children hadn't quite internalized their acting class lessons. Puddleglum, the third lead, is somewhat better, but that's probably because his character calls for odd behavior, always inherently more entertaining. The rest of the acting is more or less passable but certainly nothing to excite even a small town acting awards committee.The animation is really amateurish, including the entirely fake-looking Aslan and his up-and-down-only mouth movement. The owls in flight are nearly embarrassing, the animation is so poor. The special effects are another sorry area. A number of these take place over a "green-screen," with the adjustment not well done so that the shimmering around the edges of the actors so positioned is often quite pronounced. That this production was shot on video tape, with the stark and artificial look it has, might have saved money, but it didn't improve the production any.The music is particularly poor. It almost seemed as if whoever did this wrote a score without viewing the video. There is not much linkage between the two, and the nature and quality of the score isn't very good in any case. The sets are better, many being pretty well done. Locations are nice, too. Costuming ranges from pretty good to bizarre.Perhaps strangest and most amateurish is the lagging nature of the dialogue, as if the director was trying to stretch out the production length another 20 percent. There is nearly always too much time between elements of dialogue. It gives the whole production a really phony-sounding quality.It is disappointing to see a BBC production, particularly of an English classic, this poorly done. The highest possible use for the video tape masters of this effort would be to use them to kindle a fire in a land fill.
Tom May
While I would largely agree with the sentiments as expressed by the below gentleman, I would contend a few cases. This chap claims it was a "trilogy"? Well, he's fallen prey to the IMDB-shared delusion that Prince Caspian & Dawntreader are one story, when in fact they are and were intended as two separate books and dramatisations! Also, I think "Loach10" is grossly misrepresenting the below commentators when he tars them with the mantle of "cynicism"; the reviews are, on the contrary, wholly favourable if rather short and indeed make little reference to special effects. I would also suggest that by no means does the "trilogy" "more than adequately cover" the whole Narnia saga - heavens, they didn't make "The Last Battle", frankly my favourite book of them all and a great close to the series. Oh, and the perhaps not so small case of "A Horse and His Boy"; a fine little contrast of a book, fleshing out Calormen, featuring good characters and generally offering refreshing, derring Arabian Nights-esque "do".Anyway, enough of such quibbling, however required it be. May I declare I know the below reviewer "in real life" and the said Chris Loach is a fine, if contrary fellow. He indeed even lent me the video of "The Silver Chair" last year, from which I am able to type this addled review. I too was revisiting it after around ten years, after liking the whole Narnia shebang as a child. Beady eyed folk may know if they've read my "Caspian/Voyage" joint review that my feelings were mixed regarding those two, with "Caspian" very mediocre and "Voyage" wonderful. "The Silver Chair" stands somewhere in between for me, albeit closer to the quality of "Voyage of the Dawn Treader"."The Silver Chair" is one of my favourite of the stories, with a fairy tale plot proving a nice contrast to the mystical, Homeric journey of "Dawn Treader". The whole Rillian story is most enjoyable and yes, could even be viewed as a potential adult fairy tale, though it's not truly intended that way. Tom Baker is wonderful yes, as Puddleglum, but it is perhaps more a job of excellent casting than acting: anyone who has seen as many Tom Baker "Dr Who" episodes as I have, not to mention other stuff he's been in, would know he has got a limited range. It is however a range that centres around a comic flair and otherworldly eccentricity; his early Dr Whos I suppose show him in a slightly more restrained, mixed vein. That's not to say Baker is unwelcome when going a little OTT; his mid-late Dr Whos are wonderfully enjoyable although he could often tend to overshadow the stories and guest casts in some of those... Oh, and his Puddleglum is certainly eccentric, if I suppose restrained in the sense that he's dour. No doubt, anyway, that his presence is more than welcome and he's really the only member of the cast to match the high standards as set by Samuel West and John Hallam in the previous dramatization. Camilla Power, who I see is still acting in British TV, is very good as Jill, certainly convincing as this slight misfit of a girl, less cloying than Lucy and certainly more damn substantial than the "here today, gone tomorrow" Susan! She's a good 13 or so, and so seems to be playing younger than she is - but that could be just the changing times that have brought the perspective that girls of 12/13 are not so innocent as they once were. Jill Pole is certainly a lot more likeable than most of the other Narnia children; lol, perhaps as she's from a "Secondary Modern" school...! Yes, I do see that the adaptation to TV diluted many of C.S. Lewis' hilarious thinly-veiled attacks on comprehensive school education... I was really taken aback by this when reading the book fairly recently, certainly a sign of a slightly jaundiced, conservative view towards "Progressive Schools" that manifests itself in these lower class variants on the "Tom Brown's Schooldays" bullies. Eustace, the mellowed sort that he now is, works pretty well in this story, though he is a trifle bland - his preposterous indignation was very amusing indeed early in "Dawn Treader" I feel. The "Har Fang" episode is in many ways the best part of it, and certainly the part I remembered most; who could forget the giant, amazingly sinister, smiling face of Patsy Byrne? She is indeed playing an oddly similar role, as some sort of nanny, to that she played in the fine sitcom, "Blackadder II". Tom Baker shines in the scene where Puddleglum's (maybe) pretending to be drunk, and when he realises the mess they are in it's hilarious. There's some great comedy also at some meal part where Jill beams, "Oh! I've never tasted vension before! Isn't it scrumptious!?" Puddleglum says in relation to her acting, "The giants all seem to love her", Eustace goes, "Girls are always much better at that sort of thing than boys..." and then Baker delivers it wonderfully: "Even boys are better at it than Marshwiggles..." The whole section is well filmed, as really, is most of the rest of it. Only the scenes actually set in Narnia are a little unsatisfying, though there is of course... the snake! Yes, the Narnia scenes, as with "Prince Caspian" do not show the place in sufficiently sublime a light for me - is it me or were the BBC unlucky with the weather they got? They also could have chosen less mundane areas of the British countryside I feel, not that it's bad; it's just that Narnia should look like something special and magical. Again, you also have a few of the comedy Yorkshire accents - "Ah! The boy's useless!" - attributed to animals who, well, are not the greatest costumed perhaps. Also, the aged Caspian element is not so well conveyed as it should be.Old Babs Kellerman - practically the only mature female lead performer the series ever used - is better than in "Prince Caspian", though she admittedly does have more screen time here, and a role central to the plot. Oh, and she doesn't have to don the ageing make-up to play such an "Old Hag" as her "Prince Caspian" character is billed. We perhaps have a little make up of a different kind, as we are treated to this Green Lady, a dame who quite clearly has a sexual as well as magical hold over Rilian. It is undeniably implicit in the story at a few points I would say. Kellerman is slightly hammy but not to so large a degree as with "Prince Caspian" and from my distant memories, her role in "The Lion, The Witch...". The actor who played Rilian is indeed excellent, giving much credibility and a dangerous edge to his character. Come to think of it, when the Underworld part of the story does not involve the Lady or Rilian, it does get slightly more dull... The "Old Father Time" bit and more of it, was better done in the book. Of course, the climatic "There never *was* such a world as Narnia..." scene, including Puddleglum's passionate speech, is stirring, effective stuff with atmosphere and pathos. I love Tom Baker's delivery of the speech, and Kellerman's "Over... *world*?" giddily questioning tones, trying to make reality appear a dazed dream. Speaking of intonations, Ronald Pickup masterfully voices the immobile Aslan - Pickup really has got a rich, lovely voice.On a final note, I feel a certain lack of confidence in any likely project to bring the Narnia series to film. Certainly some stray animal costumes and the like would be more visually up to standard, but indeed, would the charm be preserved? For every thoughtful "Lord of the Rings" film adaptation you get myriad anaemic mummifyings - "Harry Potter" - and on the chance occasion you even get adaptations of charming British originals like "The Avengers" TV series that are frankly cringeworthily misguided...! I'm sure we would get a British cast largely for Narnia films, but that is no guarantee you're going to get the right people. The choice of director would be important - no ill-plying hack like Jeremiah S. Chechik or that Columbus feller. To conclude, I feel such a project would be highly risky, and the idea of "a modern adaptation" of Narnia is surely missing the point entirely, as much of their charm is grounded in the past. You cannot have the children as anything other than 1940s English public school stock, for example. Besides, what I want is for the BBC to finally do "The Last Battle"... or failing that, let someone like David Lynch or budding director Tom May take have a stab at doing a dark if still recognizable film of it! "The Silver Chair"; certainly a TV adaptation excellent in most regards that matter...Rating:- ****/*****
