I got around to seeing Narnia today and it surpassed all of my expectations. It was absolutely brilliant! So much so that it's hard to believe that the same person who brought us Shrek gave us this. The acting, the CGI, the sound effects, and the soundtrack were all done magnificiently! Thus follows is my review of CON:TL,TW,ATW:

To start things off, the casting was done brilliantly! The wonderful and intelligent performances of those who donned the roles of Lucy, Susan, Peter, and Edmund go to show that you can't make assumptions about the talents of child actors from TPM and Jurassic Park, especially Georgie Henley (Lucy), who, IMO, is Dakota Fanning's British counterpart. Tilda Swinton (the White Witch) puts forth an amazing and disturbingly brilliant performance rivaling Ian McDiarmid's in ROTS. Like Hannibal Lector and Jack Torrance, the White Witch is simply a villain even more evil on screen than in the adapted novel. James McAvoy (Mr. Tumnus) gives a great performance as well. Liam Neeson was great as Aslan. I especially liked the performances of Ray Winstone and Dawn French who make up Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, who are the two characters of comic relief in the film, giving a hilariously satirical performance as a middle-aged couple.

Unlike most movies these days, the use of CGI really lends to the film, increasing the atmosphere of an already mystifying Narnia. The film manages to add highly realistic emotions to the characters, assisting the successful personification of the film's many animals. Besides, how else are you going to have hundreds of extras walking around on hooves?

In addition, in the complete opposite way of Harry Potter 4, the movie remains faithful to the novel, which is pretty easy with such a short book anyway, even adding a few new scenes.

The soundtrack is magnificient, truly enticing you into the world of Narnia. One of Harry Gregson-William's greatest scores by far.

However, there are a couple flaws with the film, all of which lying in the beginning, which is well worth surviving. The film begins with the children's home being bombed during World War II. In my opinion, this isn't the best way to start a movie about a mystical utopia. Airfighter bombings just don't fit in with this movie.

And the first twenty minutes of the film are extremely slow. Until Edmund enters the wardrobe, things are pretty boring. Considering how exciting the remainder of the film is, I figure they could have good pacing in the beginning as well.

The film shines in the final battle, which consists of incredible cinematography and drama as well as general ecstacy (no, not the drug).

So, overall, I highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes a great fantasy film or has read C.S. Lewis's masterpiece. You'll be highly pleased.

And a word of advice to these movie-goers, if you find yourself sitting next to an emotional middle-aged woman who inferrably restricts her viewing to Lifetime channel movies, for the love of god, move before it's too late!