After watching Disney's newest movie Narnia, I thought I'd share a few thoughts:
The movie was as good as I expected, and then some—it definitely beats the old BBC version! The movie was quite faithful to the story, cutting only a few parts of the movie where necessary, but maintaining all the Christian imagery quite well.
I think someone who is either (a) not Christian or (b) not already acquainted with the Narnia story will be utterly confused by the story and the characters, though. The themes of self-sacrifice and surrender are present, and will leave those who don't understand the message of Jesus Christ completely dumbfounded.
After reading some other reviews of the movie, I agree that some of the CG effects were a little overdone, and some of the characters had just a hint of being unrealistic... of course, none of the characters of Narnia are supposed to be found in our everyday world anyways! There were a few parts in the movie where I felt the acting or scenes could have been better, but I don't regret paying for my ticket to watch this movie.
One of the most pleasant surprises was how well the completely-computer-generated character of Aslan looked, as well as a few of the other characters who were either fully or partly CG. I think that we are beginning to see a revolution in filmmaking; for the first time, moviegoers are fully accepting CG characters—not seeing them so much as CG characters anymore, but more as actual characters in the movies.
If Disney and Walden produce more movies in the Narnia series, you can be sure I will be watching them! I hope they will continue to stay true to C.S. Lewis' original stories, though...