Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I feel like a traitor to the cause for expressing this: the Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the most disappointing movie I recall. The movie does less with more. I understood that Prince Caspian was not the best story for a movie, but I enjoyed the movie in the theater nonetheless and was excited when I could buy the DVD and watch it again. Moreover, I agreed with the writer who said that the most important thing about the PC movie was that it made it possible for VDT-the-movie. VDT is a story that cries out for a visual representation, an overloading of the senses with the mysteries of the sea quest and the heroes' movement toward the supernatural.

Unfortunately the VDT movie had none of this. Its makers exchanged the classic plot for cute movie story lines: a lost mother, a child stowaway and the martial mouse's tutelage and befriending of an unpleasant boy. What I expected was a visual feast of ingenious special effects imagining the sacramental; what I experienced was a sea with white flowers rather than a sea of white flowers, and a boundary to Aslan's country that would have excited me when I was a surfer -- a six-foot face that never closed -- but in no way represented the wonder expressed in C.S. Lewis's description.

Honestly, other than the fact that the movie is about C.S. Lewis's wonderful story, in many ways the most appealing of the Chronicles, there is nothing to commend this movie.

I love Silver Chair, but except for the characterization of Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, I have no anticipation of another Narnia movie. Unless, of course, Peter Jackson is enlisted.