The Chronicles Of Narnia - The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe (DVD)

This wonderful movie gives us back the "special effects film" proper. Here's hoping it helps to wean younger viewers (and older ones who should know better) away from the "might-as-well-be-a-cartoon" overkill of the Matrix and other CGI-fests - even Jackson's Kong has, for me, one dinosaur-chase too many - and back to the mythopoeic splendours of true cinema artists like Ray Harryhausen. Setting aside the technical verisimilitude of 2001 and the zooming rockets of Star Wars, it's no coincidence that the previous benchmark for really special special effects was "Jason and the Argonauts"; bringing mythology to life - that is, putting real performers in the frame with mythical beasts - is the modern age's equivalent of Ovid and the rest doing it in narrative poetry. With Narnia, we finally get a worthy contemporary inheritor of those legacies, cinematic and literary.

Of course, one of the secrets of a great "special effects film" is that the wizardry is complemented by excellence in other areas. Narnia gives us, for a start, some genuinely good child actors (English ones, to boot!) for our protagonists. The young performers here manage to convey emotion and just the right level of anachronism to chime with the story's wartime setting, without resort to jarring Harry Potterish bum notes of trendiness (or that series' often wooden, school-play delivery of the juvenile dialogue). Georgie Henley in particular is absolutely pitch-perfect in her depiction of little Lucy's delight, terror, sadness, and, above all, innocent wonder - the perfect "Disney kid," in fact (and much, much better than that brand might imply).

The Narnia grown-ups are also fantastic, similar streaks ahead of the Potter adult rota: compare James Cosmo's brief and brilliant Father Christmas here with the Dumbledores of Harris and Gambon, for example. Better still, put Tilda Swinton's subtly terrifying White Witch against any of cinema's fear-queens and she's going to come out at the top. James McAvoy's faun is a touching demonstration of that actor's striking versatility.

Meanwhile, on the voice-over front, we have Ray Winstone's delightful Mister Beaver (paired with a Dawn French thankfully restrained from making this character "her own" (i.e. not funny)), a great, appropriate fox from Rupert Everett and many other fine vocalisations, culminating in a gloriously leonine sound-portrait of Aslan from Liam Neeson.

The story is already established as a modern classic; the screenplay is pretty faithful. Pacing, cinematography (a glorious colour palette is on view throughout) and music are all fine, too. But the breath is most taken, of course, by the beautifully-integrated effects. When I spoke of the voice-over performances just now, you have to see what amazing justice is done to the real actors by their animated counterparts (and vice-versa). Facial expressions, body-language, authentic animal behaviour and anthropomorphic adaptations are welded in magnificent style, convincing and entertaining at the same time. The wolves look as real as the centaurs; the demons are as alive as the cheetahs; the gryphon (the gryphon!) is somehow truer to "life" than, say, any of the Black Beauties we've seen filmed. The phoenix is astounding. In true Jason style, we also get a harpy, taunting Aslan on his way to his execution.

The masterpiece in this gallery of wonders, indeed, has to be Aslan; the lion is real; super-real; moving just for being so beautifully realised !!