The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (PG)

Starring: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell and Liam Neeson as Aslan

“When Adam's Flesh and Adam's bone sits in Cair Paravel in throne, the evil time will be over and done.”

It doesn’t rhyme, and given the usual formula for a prophesy, it’s not very exciting, but for fans of C S Lewis’ ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, it’s a line that could sum up the entire story of that seventh of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Directed by the same man who had control over both of the Shrek films, this film could easily have descended into a tale full of toilet humour and petty gags. Surprisingly, however, Disney got the right man, and Andrew Adamson did an amazing job of keeping Narnia far from the path it could have gone down.

The film was in production for three years, which means it fell guest to the dubious honour of being shot in chronological order. After all, you can’t order your four leading actors to stop growing throughout the production, and not one of them was left unbitten by the growth-spurt bug.

For those of you who don’t already know, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is the tale of four children sent away from home to keep themselves safe from the horrors of World War II. They find themselves in a house of mansionic proportions, with an elderly professor, and a cranky housemaid, nothing in the least bit exciting or unusual about that.

Until one day, Lucy (Henley) stumbles across a wardrobe in her quest to find a spot during hide and seek. She pushes past the fur coats, and to her wide-eyed astonishment, finds herself in another land, where she befriends a fawn named Tumnus (James McAvoy). Of course, on her return through the wardrobe, she immediately goes off to find the others, none of whom believe her. Edmund (Keynes) ridicules her (“Didn’t I tell you about the football field in the bathroom cupboard?”), but follows her one night and runs afoul of the White Witch.

One day, after smashing a window, the four run to hide before they can be pulled up about the damage. And, as luck would have it, the only place to hide is in that very same wardrobe. And then it’s a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the siblings take on a war against Jadis, the White Witch.

There’s a golden rule in the film industry: never work with children or animals. This film has taken that, crushed it into the ground, and then jumped up and down on the ashes, screaming like a banshee. Children, wolves, lions, centaurs, they all add to the magic.

For me, however, the ultimate show stopper has to be Aslan. A great hulking lion with the voice of Liam Neeson, well, I’d just like to point out that Aslan is one kitty you wouldn’t wanna pet on a bad day :S For a character created entirely through CG (no lions were used in the production), the screen presence he holds is amazing. Without going into too much detail, the scene at the stone table could actually reduce you to tears…just don’t admit that to anyone else!

Also, believe it or not, there were Christian subtexts running throughout the narrative. After all, why a lion for Aslan, who is he trying to represent? You could be forgiven for not noticing those elements, after all, minotaurs and centaurs are hardly part of Christianity. Nonetheless…

I came out of the cinema with a self-assured smile on my face. I’d gone back to my childhood, where finding a fantasyland in my wardrobe seemed entirely plausible, and where the idea of it being winter but never Christmas horrified me. That’s the mark of a good film.

Now, who’s with me for a game of hide and seek?