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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1988)
Barely watchable.
As far as adaptations of novels go, this is fairly good and very faithful to the source material.
However, that's where anything good about this adaptation of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" ends. The initial performances of the children are passable, as is Digory Kirke, but from the moment Lucy enters Narnia, the film goes downhill at break-neck speed. The effects, and I KNOW it was 1988, are absolutely dreadful. The fauns are clearly wearing some sort of furry pair of trousers, the woodland spirits look like (and probably are) people romping about in silk pajamas wearing face paint, in fact, all the mythological creatures look hacky and ridiculous. The Beavers are the worst of all. Rather than making ANY attempts to make the Beavers, key characters in the book, look convincing, the makers seemed to just shove the actors into fat suits, stick some brown fur, ears and tails on them and paint their faces with the most ludicrous make-up I've ever seen. Aslan is portrayed by an apparently robotic lion, which in all fairness looks brilliant, but when he "speaks" the sync is out and it just looks like a bad puppet.
But one can look past the poor visuals and write them down to budgeting and whatnot.
But the budget should have been enough to cast someone with decent acting skills, because by far the WORST thing about this adaptation is the woman portraying the White Witch. Her "acting" consists of the hammiest, most melodramatic gestures and screaming. Any screen time she has, which is a considerable amount, is cringe-worthy and unbearable. She pretty much ruins the film with her screeching and limb-flailing. In saying that however, none of the performances are noteworthy or even satisfactory. The children started off well, but one can only assume that they were soon bewildered by the stupidity of the effects and acting of the "Narnians" so they just gave up. The Beavers and Mr Tumnus are just awful, and in the ensemble scene towards the end (I will not call it a battle, as children running around with toy guns or wooden swords are more convincing warriors) is perhaps the most unintentionally hilarious piece of celluloid inexistence.
I would only recommend this to die-hard C.S. Lewis and Narnia fans. But even they will be disappointed by the way a good adaptation is brought crashing down by the horrendous production values. For anyone else, steer clear of this and save yourself a couple of hours of agony.