In a sentenceSeven lost lords, seven magic swords, one green mist and a mouse doing most of the work
England, during the war. Lucy Pevensie (Georgie Henley) and her brother Edmund (Skandar Keynes) have been sent to stay in Cambridge with their cousin Eustace Scrubb (Will Poulter), who keeps a diary, resents them both and does not believe a word about Narnia. A painting of a ship on the bedroom wall begins to spill seawater, and all three are pulled through it and hauled aboard the Dawn Treader, where King Caspian (Ben Barnes) is sailing east to find seven lords banished by his uncle. With him are his captain Drinian (Gary Sweet) and the mouse Reepicheep (voiced by Simon Pegg), who wants to reach the end of the world. Their first landfall is the Lone Islands, where slavers run a market in the harbour town and a green mist has been taking people from the shore.
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Michael Apted’s Narnia is a pleasant cruise with a good boy and a good mouse aboard, and no reason to be at sea. The swords and the mist are inventions, and they feel like it. Fine for a wet Sunday; the book deserved more.
Michael Apted takes over the Narnia films for the third voyage, and he has drawn the hardest of the books to film. C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has no villain and barely a plot; it is a ship going east and stopping at islands, and the islands are the point. Christopher Markus, Michael Petroni and Stephen McFeely have given it a plot anyway: seven swords to be collected and a green mist to be seen off. The result is a tidy, good-natured 113 minutes that is never dull and never once worries you, and we think the book’s shapelessness was worth more than the film’s shape.
Will Poulter is the best thing in it, and it is not close. Eustace Scrubb is written as a prig who records everything in a diary and resents everyone he meets, and Poulter plays him with a jutting chin and a voice pitched a note too high, like a boy who has read how grown-ups complain and is practising. He is funny from his first scene. We laughed, and then noticed we were only laughing when he was on screen.
Reepicheep is the other reason to stay. Simon Pegg voices the mouse as a small, courteous knight who is slightly too pleased with himself, and the animators give him a rapier, a feather and a face that can do wistful. He wants to sail to the end of the world and says so plainly, and he is the only character aboard whose want is his own rather than the script’s.
Everybody else is collecting things. The seven swords are not in Lewis and they play like a shopping list. The green mist drifts in whenever the writers need a threat and drifts out when they have finished with it, and because it has no rules we never learned what it could do. Rick Shaine cuts the voyage as a run of arrivals: an island, a trial, a sword, the next island, each stop over before we know what the place is like. The slave market on the Lone Islands ought to be frightening and is cleared up in minutes with a sword fight nobody is in danger of losing.
The ship is lovely, and it is the one thing the money bought that Lewis would recognise. Barry Robison’s Dawn Treader has a gilded dragon’s head for a prow, a purple sail and a deck you could walk around in your head afterwards, and Dante Spinotti lights it in a warm, late-afternoon gold whenever it is under way. Isis Mussenden keeps the Narnians in rich greens and leather and the English children in grey wool, which is the right joke. David Arnold’s score swells on every landfall, and there are a great many landfalls.
The Pevensies have become a problem the series did not see coming. Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes have grown into capable, solemn teenagers, and the script gives Lucy a wish to be beautiful and Edmund a wish to be king and resolves both with a speech. Ben Barnes’s Caspian is handsome and underemployed. Tilda Swinton’s White Witch returns for a minute or two of whispering out of the mist, and Liam Neeson’s Aslan arrives to explain what everything meant, which, since the film has already explained it, feels like being told twice.
Andrew Adamson, who directed the first two films and produces this one, staged his battles as if they mattered. Apted films the fights as something to get through, and the camera is often in the wrong place to tell you who is winning. Most critics have been harder on the film than we are. We think the charge of cynicism is unfair, because Poulter, Pegg and that ship are plainly the work of people who liked the book. The charge of lazy plotting sticks.
It is a PG, and a gentle one, and a child of eight will have a decent time with it. Adults who loved the book should know that the last stretch of the quest is handled in a hurry, and that its best moments are the ones with nothing to collect.
Most critics find this third Narnia film a middling adventure, and the reviews lean more negative than mixed. Where there is praise it gathers in two places. Will Poulter’s Eustace is picked out again and again as the liveliest thing on screen, and Simon Pegg’s voicing of Reepicheep is the other performance that earns consistent warmth. Several reviews also enjoy the fantastical set pieces, the sea serpent among them, whatever they think of the story around them.
The complaints cluster on the script: a quest most critics find arbitrary and without tension, religious messaging some call heavy-handed, and direction more than one review describes as perfunctory. The spread is wide. Radio Times calls it the best of the series and Den of Geek finds the franchise revitalised, while The Hollywood Reporter calls it a major failure and IndieWire the weakest entry. The warmer notices come mostly from British outlets, the harshest from the American trade press.
Jones calls it the best of the Narnia films and praises its nonstop escapism. He singles out the dynamic direction and impressive special effects.
Read the full review →The page identifies this as a review, but its verdict is hidden behind the access wall. The available text does not reveal what the critic praises or criticizes.
Read the full review →Pulver finds the film confident and visually assured, but says its human performances weaken the adventure. He praises Will Poulter’s comic turn as Eustace while faulting the Pevensies’ acting and Liam Neeson’s Aslan speeches.
Read the full review →The 3/5 rating suggests a middling verdict, though the full review is unavailable. The visible description raises the film’s nostalgic, American-financed context but does not reveal a specific point of praise or complaint.
Read the full review →Mueller finds the film an entertaining enough adventure, though its religious messaging is heavy-handed and its script weakens the characters and humor. He praises the lively array of fantastical encounters, especially the sea serpent and other imaginative set pieces.
Read the full review →Jolin finds this a mixed, rushed installment that still offers enjoyable spectacle. He praises Will Poulter as the series’ best child actor so far.
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Jason and the Argonauts · not reviewed yetAnother island-hopping quest, with monsters that still feel heavier than most pixels.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the WorldA ship you believe in, and a crew you would follow to the Galápagos.
Spirited AwayA child in a strange world where the rules are odd but always kept.
Time BanditsA boy pulled out of his bedroom into history; funnier and much stranger.
Paddington 2British family filmmaking with proper jokes, a real heart and nothing to collect.
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