Rating: 
Summary: BEST MOVIE EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: Both children and adults will be enchanted with this magical adventure. In addition, older children and adults will see the strong Christian parallels in the story. Good clearly wins over evil as the Christ figure, Aslan the Lion, gives his life to redeem one of the child adventurers and then rises again to ensure the defeat of the wicked white witch. Christian adults will see and hear the strong biblical echoes.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent Christian movie
Review: Evacuated to the country for their protection (during World War 2), Lucy, Peter, Susan and Edmund begin to explore the big house that is their new home. In a back room is a large wardrobe filled with old coats and things, but stepping through the wardrobe, the children find something fantastic, another world! But this new world is not a happy place; it is locked in the grip of perpetual winter by the magic of an evil queen (played by Barbara Kellerman).The children learn that Aslan, the lion king of this world of Narnia, is back and can help them against the witch. But when they learn that Peter (Richard Dempsey) was actually in the witch's service they need even more help. Aslan is as good as he is powerful, and with him all things are possible. [Color, originally aired in 1988, with a running time of 3 hours.] This movie (actually three television episodes) is a based quite closely on C.S. Lewis's book of the same title. Some of the acting is a little overdone, and the cartoon creatures look awfully two-dimensional, but the story is nothing short of excellent and the lion Aslan is surprisingly well done. Also, I do think that the creators of this movie did an excellent job of capturing the mood of the book and bringing the viewer through the story without too much cutting. (Books made into movies are often butchered!) My eleven-year-old daughter read the book recently, while I read it a long time ago. My whole family enjoyed this movie immensely, and I enjoyed the lessons that it taught. My wife and I tried to explain the Christian symbols as the story moved along. We loved this movie, and highly recommend it to you.
Rating:
Summary: Chronicles of Narnia - Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Review: Excellent miniseries version of the classic C.S. Lewis tale. A talented cast, great script and a heartwarming musical score add extraordinary beauty to this BBC classic. Standing out in her performance is Barbara
Kellerman as the White Witch, who actually adds a quality rarely
seen in today's film and television.
Rating:
Summary: Immerse your child and yourself in Narnia
Review: Excellent video production by people who love and respect C.S. Lewis and his Narnia Chronicles. My son likes this particular story of the series the best (so far) and after reading it, we watched this show. The book was enhanced by it, not diminished. Wonderful sets, actors and dialogue. It may be a bit intense with the White Witch scenes as the actress plays it to the hilt, but either holding hands or the fast forward button soon remedies the few minutes of nasty old witch harmless. The Brits know how to make the ultimate Narnia show. Get the DVD if you can.
Rating: 
Summary: If only they'd had a better budget!
Review: For those unfamiliar with the story, this is an allegory for the story of salvation through Jesus Christ. Even without the spiritual understanding, however, it's a captivating fantasy story, part of a seven-book series written decades ago by British scholar/apologist C.S. Lewis, and this filmed version (originally broadcast on the BBC in England and on PBS in the States) does a beautiful job of capturing the spirit of the story and its characters. My 5-year-old daughter, thankfully, loves it as much as I do. The story essentially includes four London children in 1940 who are spending their school holiday (summer vacation) in the country, sent by parents who are worried for their lives in wartime in London, when Hitler was intent on bombing that city into oblivion. They discover a hidden door to a magical world of fawns, nymphs, talking animals, giants, a white witch, and a majestic lion called Aslan. And oh, what a lion! If only the filmmakers had been able to better solve the problem of making a lion's mouth speak English. Therein lies the only problem I have with anything about this film (first in a series of three films about the Narnia Chronicles). The lion costume is spectacular otherwise, but the FX are severely curtailed by a BBC budget. Some of the more magical creatures, when the filmmakers couldn't put an actor into a costume, were simply drawn, creating a jarring effect. Even my 5-year-old asked why the flying horse was a drawing. If this series could be redone with 21st-century FX and a "Lord Of the Rings" budget, it would be equally spectacular. But we have what we have, and what we have is uplifting, enchanting, memorable, and thoroughly entertaining. Suitably melodramatic at times, with the kind of uneven acting one might expect from children and other disguised little people, it plays like an upscale "Doctor Who" episode with a gospel overtone. And yes, that's a good thing. (In fact, "Doctor Who" actor Tom Baker plays a major role in the third part of this series, "The Silver Chair.")
Rating: 
Summary: No grownups in beaver suits, please!
Review: Hoping for a good visual treatment of Lewis' Narnia books, I ordered this tape. My kids and I were appalled by the adult actors in cheaply made animal costumes, as well as the creepy special effects for all the non-actor animals apart from Aslan (looks like all the $$$ went into Aslan). Now with all the great digital computer animation possible, will someone please redo this series, a la Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings?
Rating:
Summary: Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Review: I give this 5 stars because its an amazing
childrens film, directed amazingly for a made
for TV movie and wonderful special effects for
1988. The film/story is also the most superb of
the trilogy. 4 english children travel to another
world to escape the real anxiety and fear of WW2
and the nazi invasion. The white witch is hysterical
and perfectly casted! Im 23 and I still love this
movie and I will never remove it from my DVD collection,
yet I also recommend it highly safe and entertaining for
kids. This is a film the whole family can enjoy. I also
enjoyed the 3rd film "the silver chair" and rated it 4. The
middle film wasnt as good, but you may want it cause it
ties into the other two films.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful and Magical
Review: I have all three of the Chronicles of Narnia video sets - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe; Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; and The Silver Chair, having been given them as gifts at least 7 years ago. I am shocked that these are now currently not available, especially with the current Harry Potter craze. The Chronicles of Narnia are wonderful stories for children and adults alike and these British productions from the late 1980s of four of the seven C.S. Lewis books are wonderful and magical. I thought I recalled still seeing these in the PBS Video Catalogs from time to time - I could be mistaken though. Even though I already have these tapes, I hope they are re-released soon for others to enjoy!!!
Rating:
Summary: Bad Beginning....
Review: I love the books, and think of them as some of the best literature ever written. I enjoyed watching the animated movie as a kid, but longed for something that was more real- namely, live action. And in an age when Harry Potter is big, and The Lord of the Rings has been updated into live action from it's original animation, why not also Narnia? And here it is. It kept very close to the book, which was helpful. And it is overwhelmingly British- which is just right, since Lewis was British and wrote about British children. This is a production that needed to be done in England to do it right. The acting is certainly superior to anything you see in Harry Potter, thank God- these children can actually act, and emote. But as many have pointed out, the special effects really drag the movie down. It's a bit odd, as the movie obviously has the money for location shooting that put it above a high-school project. But every little while through the movie, you see bits that look like high-schoolers plugged sequences in. The beavers look like people in costumes, with make-up. There's no attempt to hide that they are people. The wolf transforms (very sloppily) from a dog into a guy in a wolf costume, who doesn't look scary as much as humorous. A bit of Babe or Animal Farm (live-action version) technology, with talking animals, would have done well here, and not have been that hard to do. And the painted mythological creatures are really badly done. A computer would have touched this up very easily, very cheaply, to make the special effects realistic- or even some costumes for mythological creatures. The telling point is a final fight scene between Peter and a wolf, in which the background suddenly changes, inexplicably, into a set for a play, throughout the entire fight. It was then that I realized that this would make an excellent play. There was nothing wrong with the acting, or costumes, or sets, were this a play. It just doesn't measure up to what we have come to expect from movies or even TV.
Rating: 
Summary: Great to see, but could have been better.
Review: I love the books, and think of them as some of the best literature ever written. I enjoyed watching the animated movie as a kid, but longed for something that was more real- namely, live action. And in an age when Harry Potter is big, and The Lord of the Rings has been updated into live action from it's original animation, why not also Narnia? And here it is. It kept very close to the book, which was helpful. And it is overwhelmingly British- which is just right, since Lewis was British and wrote about British children. This is a production that needed to be done in England to do it right. The acting is certainly superior to anything you see in Harry Potter, thank God- these children can actually act, and emote. But as many have pointed out, the special effects really drag the movie down. It's a bit odd, as the movie obviously has the money for location shooting that put it above a high-school project. But every little while through the movie, you see bits that look like high-schoolers plugged sequences in. The beavers look like people in costumes, with make-up. There's no attempt to hide that they are people. The wolf transforms (very sloppily) from a dog into a guy in a wolf costume, who doesn't look scary as much as humorous. A bit of Babe or Animal Farm (live-action version) technology, with talking animals, would have done well here, and not have been that hard to do. And the painted mythological creatures are really badly done. A computer would have touched this up very easily, very cheaply, to make the special effects realistic- or even some costumes for mythological creatures. The telling point is a final fight scene between Peter and a wolf, in which the background suddenly changes, inexplicably, into a set for a play, throughout the entire fight. It was then that I realized that this would make an excellent play. There was nothing wrong with the acting, or costumes, or sets, were this a play. It just doesn't measure up to what we have come to expect from movies or even TV.
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