We went to the cinema last night, for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and came home disappointed.

I’d read good things about it, but few of them were warranted. It’s very slow, and while it would have seemed impressed before Lord of the Rings, in these post-Jackson days it’s just a bit… well, ho-hum.

Worse, there are some very obvious blue-screen moment, where the actors are standing in front of the kind of poorly colour-synced, almost defocused backdrop we would have forgiven in the sixties, but can’t excuse today.

It’s almost like the studio saw the success of the Middle Earth trilogy, and the Harry Potter films and realised it was missing out. Panicing, it reached for the closest thing to hand, and mixed the two for what should really have been a sure-fire hit: a kids’ film set in a mythical land.

And I’m sure with a little bit more work they could have pulled it off. Except that the performances are lacklustre and I really didn’t care about the main characters, and whether they lived or died. The talking animals were no great cop, and even Aslan was one-dimensional.

Hmmm. Well, it’s the first of seven films, I guess, and I was disappointed by the first Potter film, too, although that franchise has improved over the years and the latest is very good, by all accounts.

Perhaps we should chalk up the first instalment of the Narnia series to experience, then, and see what they come up with next time around.

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