The Chronicles of Narnia; the Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Rated PG

Catholic-ometer: 4 of 5

Enjoyability: 4.5 of 5

I think I've seen every single movie adaptation of C. S. Lewis's Narnia books, with the exception of the one before this; Prince Caspian, since I didn't have much money at the time, and someone had told me it was awful.  I've read the books a number of times, however, so I knew, more or less, what the story was.

Here, I'm afraid that I must make a confession, because I've gotten into some arguments over this with friends and relatives.  As Narnia books go, I didn't really like the Voyage of the Dawn Treader all that much.  Oh, I did LIKE it, but to me, it felt like the most underwhelming of all the books, if only because of its lack of any strong, central villain.  The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the Magician's Nephew both had the White Witch; possibly the series most menacing villain, the creature called Tash cast a shadow over both The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle, Miraz was a fair opponent in Prince Caspian, and even the Lady of the Green Kirtle (the series' weakest main villain,) has at least a menacing presence in The Silver Chair.  However, Dawn Treader didn't seem to have a real threat of any sort behind it, and that always sort of bugged me.  Even a meager, or poorly-considered threat might have made it exciting.

Well, the movie, at the very least, props up this weak element from the book, by introducing a major threat; a form of enchanted mist cloud that consumes righteousness, or some such thing.  It is certainly meager and poorly-considered, but it also somewhat evokes "the nothing" from the Neverending Story, though perhaps not on quite the same level.

Most of the other major plot elements from the book are also kept in the movie; the contents of the various islands, the finding of the lords, the rivalry between Reepicheep and Eustace, etc, and they are interesting elements, becoming all the more interesting with a genuine threat hanging over them.  At least, I think they are.

On this one point, I'm in disagreement with someone I care about very much.  As pathetic and ill-considered a particle-effect bad guy as they got for this movie, it's at least a bad guy, and I feel it improved the movie quite a bit, over the somewhat-boring versions of the story that we've seen so far.

In terms of whether this film will help the faith of Catholics, it's difficult to say yes, but it doesn't hurt, attack, or belittle the Catholic faith either.  Narnia has always been a bit more protestant than Catholic, but for me, it's most enjoyable when the distinctions between the two don't even crop up, and I couldn't spot a single one in this movie.

My conclusion is that this is a faith-friendly (though not specifically Catholic) movie, which was astonishing, exciting, and thrilling, and that's what I call a fun little diversion.