Best Favorite Favourite Films of 2011...
01/10/2012
...over at All Manner of Thing. Very much worth your while if you haven't already read it. I have to pass along this comment about The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: "I love the book, and had high hopes for the film, all of which were dashed into little pieces, swept into a little pile, and thrown overboard." All too accurate, I'm sorry to say--well, maybe not the high hopes, as mine were fairly muted--but an accurate verdict.
The second film had pretty much dashed what few hopes I had, so I didn't have any desire to see my favorite of the Chronicles ruined.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 01/10/2012 at 01:47 PM
That was prudent, Janet.
Oh, and calling those films the 'best' is flattering, but more than I myself claimed for them...
Posted by: Craig | 01/10/2012 at 02:33 PM
Oh, that's right, you said "favorite" (or rather "favourite" :-)). The change wasn't conscious on my part, just sloppy.
I didn't think the first two Narnia films were *soo* bad. or...well, ok, I guess the second one was. I probably should have given up there, too. Most Narnia lovers of my acquaintance seemed pretty disappointed with the first, but I thought it was mostly pretty good, up until the battle scene, when it went all Hollywood dumb.
Posted by: Mac | 01/10/2012 at 02:46 PM
Hollywood dumb! Heh!
My expectations of Voyage of the DT that I was pleasantly surprised. Nothing like having low expectations!
Posted by: Louise | 01/10/2012 at 06:07 PM
Should read: "My expectations of Voyage of the DT were so low that I was pleasantly surprised."
Posted by: Louise | 01/10/2012 at 06:25 PM
Your expectations must have been low indeed. Mine were not very high, but, such as they were, they were not met. Here's what I wrote about it at the time. The scene where Reepicheep goes over the waves was reasonably well done.
Posted by: Mac | 01/10/2012 at 10:18 PM
They were Very Very Low!
Posted by: Louise on the iPod | 01/11/2012 at 03:11 AM
I thought the first Narnia film was OK, quite respectable. The second one was much worse. Like Janet, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my favourite, and I could not face seeing it wrecked.
Posted by: ex pat | 01/12/2012 at 08:50 AM
That was my view of the first two, and I'm not sure why I decided to see the third. Partly wanting to support a presumably well-intentioned effort. I'm usually susceptible to having a movie, bad or good, take over my perceptions of a book, but that didn't happen with DT, partly because so much it just wasn't even that effective by Hollywood standards, and partly because the end was so hopelessly misguided that it made the whole thing forgettable. It's as if they had made a movie called Voyage of the Dawn Treader and had it build to a climactic Western gunfight with Roy Rogers riding in to the rescue.
I saw some surprisingly positive reviews of it from a Catholic reviewer or two.
Posted by: Mac | 01/12/2012 at 09:56 AM