Ed's Review Dot Com

Fox 2000 Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Walden Media

Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Ben Barnes, Will Poulter, Gary Sweet, Terry Norris, Bruce Spence, Bille Brown, Laura Brent, Tilda Swinton

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the 3rd in the Walden Media series from The Chronicles of Narnia.  As this opens, Susan and Peter have grown too old to make it back to Narnia, but as the younger siblings Lucy and Edmund are living with a very annoying cousin Eustace, the notice a picture of the ocean on the wall.  There is a little ship on the ocean that wasn’t there before.  Suddenly the picture starts to move and as Eustace pulls it down off the wall, the water pours out of the picture flooding the room.  The next thing they know, they are swimming in the ocean and Eustace is with them.  They are rescued by the ship which turns out to be the Dawn Treader and captained by none other than Prince Caspian who is now a king.   He is off on a quest to find out the 7 leaders of the council who have disappeared.  It turns out that a dreadful evil is taking over the land, and the only way to defeat it is to find the seven swords of the seven Lords and place them on Aslan’s table.   Battle after battle from evil from island to island until finally the last stand.

The third installment of the Chronicles of Narnia took a lot of heat for being the least true to the novel.  Many things are changed for different reasons and I don’t know that it’s fair to blame them for a lot of the changes which seem to be necessary.  Some things that work in the book would not play so well in a theater.  Going from island to island to island would get tedious after a while, so a lot of these things were combined and condensed for the film.  It’s been a long time since I read the novels, so I’m not going to try to analyze the differences because my memory isn’t that great anymore.  🙂  But even then, a lot of it seems smaller and less spectacular in this film.   than from the earlier films.  Though it was beautiful and exiting at some points, a lot of it was underwhelming.  I viewed the film in 3-D which also was kind of a disappointment.  After a few minutes you completely forget you are watching in 3D and there is very little added by the 3D technology.  I paid $16.00 per ticket for this film, and it hurts when you are underwhelmed by the whole experience.  As much as I wanted to enjoy the movie, there was a gnawing feeling deep inside that maybe I was being ripped off a little bit.  Technically it’s superior.  The sound is excellent, and the visual is stunning.  The failure and redemption of Eustace is funny as well.  He is so annoying through the first part of the film that when he gets his in the middle, everyone is relieved.  But he comes back strong and very repentant for his bad behavior, and of course it is his time for Narnia in the following stories and Lucy and Edmond have now become too old to come back again.  The religious ties are very “in your face” obvious, but this is no surprise for anyone who followed the books.  That message is the purpose for the books in the first place and is certainly obvious but not unexpected.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Walt Disney Animation Studios, Wald Disney Pictures

Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy, Ron Perlman, M.C. Gainey, Jefrfry Tambor, Brad Garrett, Paul F. Tompkins, Richard Kiel, Dleaney Rose Stein

Disney Animations new story Tangled, based on the story of Rapunzel, has been a long time coming.  It’s nice that the old animations group was able to have a huge hit like this when everyone wants to write  them off and give all the credit to Pixar.  Having both teams firing on all cylinders is a good thing for Disney, for sure.   This story is a nice twist on the old story.  The original story was so dark and sad, that the twists they threw into this one to liven it up are a great improvement for a feature film.  The idea is that a drop of sunlight dripped to earth and created a magic flower.  An old crone found the flower and hid it from the world, but it had the ability to heal and to restore one’s youth.  Meanwhile the Queen is about to give birth and she falls very ill.  The king sends out all his soldiers to search for the rumored magic flower and finds it.  Rapunzel is born and has golden hair which has the same abilities.  She’s stolen away by the old crone and put in a high tower to keep her secret away from the world.

The colors and shades of this animated film are beautiful.  It’s also in 3D and with the CGI animation, the characters look like real people.  Rapunzel is such a lovely girl, and she’s truly worthy of the princess title and the rest of the characters are very good.  Like most films,  Rapunzel has a sidekick.  This time it’s a chameleon that is her companion in the lonely tower.   The feeling of this film reminds me more of Mulan than anything with the thieves and thugs and nasty bad guys throughout, but Disney has another big hit with this one.  It has all the stuff that makes Disney films great.  Evil witches, not so bad boy heroes that redeem themselves,  and animals for humor.  Everyone from children to great-grandparents should love this fairy tale.  Great film!  The voice characters are perfect as well.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog