A neighbor was nice enough to take us and our kids to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night. It was very good; better than I expected–much better than I was expecting in October and better than even some positive reviews had me expecting.

Complaints:
* The only thing from the book that I missed in the movie was where the Dwarf tells Jadis, “this is no thaw, it’s spring. Aslan is coming.”
* I thought the waterfall/ice floe sequence was overdone.
* Peter needs to be more willing to lop off a head when necessary.
* The Professor’s housekeeper was needlessly antagonistic.
* The dwarf was a little bit (3%) too comic.

Kudos:
* the Stone Table sequence was done very well: not as much gore as _The Passion_ but enough to give the moment some weight.
* Jadis (the White Witch/self-styled Queen of Narnia) was just what I hoped for: beautiful, cold, evil, repugnant. (My wife thought she ought to have been more alluring.)
* the casting was good all around, but Lucy (Georgie Henley) was simply amazing.
* the opening sequence during the Blitz was a surprise but a welcome one; few people today can immediately grasp why parents would send their children away indefinitely.

I enjoyed the movie from the beginning, but the point where I realized that I _really_ liked it was when Jadis came to parley with Aslan, and in the background a cheetah was striding around. I thought it was awesome and wondered “how did they _do_ that?” I’ve heard it said that when you start thinking how good the special effects are it means the story/acting/… isn’t all that good. Maybe so, although I never felt that way. I just wondered how they did that cheetah, with its spring-loaded spine. (CG? But the _fur_! Puppets? But it wasn’t a closeup head-shot! Beats me.)

I also liked the gryphons swooping around in the battle and the bat-winged whatever-it-was at the stone table.

Finally, concerning whether the rating is appropriate, given the scenes of epic battles and mature themes: one of my children said it should be rated “PG-5, because (a 5-year old friend) might be scared by it.” My child isn’t much older; while there are some violent moments, none are especially graphic. The stone table sequence is, if anything, underplayed.

If I gave out star ratings, I’d give this a prime number.