I received the DVD set as a Christmas gift from my sister. Being a military wife with a husband who just deployed, I had a lot of time on my hands and just watched the entire series. While I feel the Disney movie strikes the iron much better for our times, this movie took me back to when I was a six year old watching the premier of the series on PBS.
The special effects are definitely low-budget. Without computer animation, it's laughable...but this is pretty bad even for the late 80s. The green screen flying makes you groan. Aslan is pretty decent looking, but just keep his mouth closed! And Mogram, a man in a wolf costume, is insulting. But I tell you, his howl terrified me as a child (I would have nightmares about that howl), so it still sends a chill up my spine.
I guess my main problem was the casting. All the reviews seem to comment on the acting as a good thing, but looking back, these four "children" are too friggin' old! Sophie Wilcox was 13 when she made this. When reading the books, Lucy is a child of maybe 5 or 6. It makes her character unbelievable when she is a preadolescent. And her buck teeth! (BTW, anyone ever notice that when Lucy first meets Tumnus, all he has to do is offer her food to get her to come with him? That girl needs some serious Weight Watchers) I digress, the movie and the whole series is a good adaptation of the novels for the times. Far better than the animated version (god save us all from ever seeing THAT on DVD). Hopefully it will inspire others like me to read the books and discover Lewis's metaphors and meanings behind his "fantasy" stories. These are, after all, Christian novels. I hope that the new movie will also encourage people to read the books.
On that note, I will say that at the end of Silver Chair, when Aslan mentions knowing him by "the other name" in our world, I still got tears in my eyes. Aslan was my childhood's Christ - I came to love God because of Aslan.
Sorry, didn't mean to get preachy, just wanted to say it's a good series, good for children, and a great walk down memory lane.
The special effects are definitely low-budget. Without computer animation, it's laughable...but this is pretty bad even for the late 80s. The green screen flying makes you groan. Aslan is pretty decent looking, but just keep his mouth closed! And Mogram, a man in a wolf costume, is insulting. But I tell you, his howl terrified me as a child (I would have nightmares about that howl), so it still sends a chill up my spine.
I guess my main problem was the casting. All the reviews seem to comment on the acting as a good thing, but looking back, these four "children" are too friggin' old! Sophie Wilcox was 13 when she made this. When reading the books, Lucy is a child of maybe 5 or 6. It makes her character unbelievable when she is a preadolescent. And her buck teeth! (BTW, anyone ever notice that when Lucy first meets Tumnus, all he has to do is offer her food to get her to come with him? That girl needs some serious Weight Watchers) I digress, the movie and the whole series is a good adaptation of the novels for the times. Far better than the animated version (god save us all from ever seeing THAT on DVD). Hopefully it will inspire others like me to read the books and discover Lewis's metaphors and meanings behind his "fantasy" stories. These are, after all, Christian novels. I hope that the new movie will also encourage people to read the books.
On that note, I will say that at the end of Silver Chair, when Aslan mentions knowing him by "the other name" in our world, I still got tears in my eyes. Aslan was my childhood's Christ - I came to love God because of Aslan.
Sorry, didn't mean to get preachy, just wanted to say it's a good series, good for children, and a great walk down memory lane.