Product Description

Lucy, Peter, Susan, and Edmund find themselves transported to the enchanted world of Narnia after wandering into an old wardrobe in a countryside estate. In Narnia the children discover an evil White Witch who has turned her enemies to stone and placed permanent winter over all the land. According to legend, the brave children are to be lead by Aslan the Great Lion to destroy the witch and transform Narnia back into the paradise it was meant to be. But the evil witch has plans of her own.

Digitally remastered for the first time and presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 sound!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29982 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2006-03-28
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Original recording remastered, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 162 minutes

Customer Reviews

Conserning The, BBC "REMASTERED" DVD Version
I wanted to love the new movie version of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, I really and truly did. I even convinced myself to purchase the double disc, special edition of the new film, hopping upon hope to find a new appreciation of the film through another viewing, and/or the behind the scenes extras (as has happened with a few films in the past; The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, for instance, even though I still find the BBC mini series of that, better, I now like the film MUCH more then I did upon first viewing)...

I actually, almost, had myself deluded into thinking that the movie and its unnecessary need to veer away from the book in both words and events, wasn't, so bad...

Then a neat thing happened to me, while researching another movie, I discovered that there was a REMASTERED edition of the original BBC mini series, on DVD coming to Canada on April 25, 2006 from Morningstar Entertainment (and already available in the U.S. through Image) and I happened to luck out and find a place that had the U.S. version in stock, for a relatively decent price (19.99 Canadian funds + tax) here in Canada.

So, I scrapped some money together (payday wasn't till Friday, and it was only Monday) picked it up, played it as soon as I got home, and suddenly, the mind laps that had me thinking that the movie wasn't so bad, was gone, for here was the real story of the wondrous land of Narnia, come to life, in all of it's glorious verse and imagery, and with no pointless need for veering from the original source material, to achieve this.

As for the newly remastered picture, well, there's still a slight bit of the ghosting that had plagued the original DVD, but the picture is much clearer, colours are much more vibrant (although, on occasion, the colour saturation is so strong that it almost looks like it had been colourized, but not enough to ruin the experience, on the contrary, as it tends to give the whole thing a more fairy tale look) and the White Witch, actually has a white, instead of off grey, complexion (which in itself is a great improvement over the older disc).

Okay, granted the F/X's are kind of hooky by today's, "Lord Of The Rings", standards, but what it lacks in flash, it more then makes up for in heart (where as the movie, is the exact opposite, having all the flash that money can buy, but very little of the heart of the original story).

So if flashy F/X are all that you crave, then I guess the new movie is for you, but if you want to feel like a kid again, feel the magic that reading the books for the first time instilled within you, then the BBC mini series is the way to go.

Here's hopping that the rest of the BBC Narnia mini series get the remastered treatment, and soon :)

A more faithful version
I must admit, I fell asleep in my first viewing. It drags a lot especially when Mrs. Beaver is packing food. The mythic characters did not look that well on screen since they looked like giant mascots. Edmund is taller than Peter. Lucy is not as cute as the Lucy of the 2005 Disney Walden adaptation. Aslan's voice does not fit much. But still, I like this version because it is the version that has more soul in it. It is more faithful to book though it lacked the grandeur of it.

The Lion, the Witch, and the BBC
Last December, C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" followed in the footsteps of the "Lord of the Rings Trilogy," with a gleaming new big-screen adaptation.

And despite the new movie's presence, it's worth taking a trip back to the 1988 adaptation of Lewis's book, produced by the BBC. It's evenly divided between good and bad -- good scripting and some good acting, but also some poor acting and sketchy direction.

The four Pevensie children arrive in the country, at the start of World War II. Despite the eccentric but friendly professor (Michael Aldridge) who lives there, they're all bored. And during a game of hide-and-seek, Lucy (Sophie Wilcox) slips into an old wardrobe -- and finds that the back of it opens into a magical, snowy forest land called Narnia. She encounters a friendly faun, but when she arrives back home, she finds that none of her siblings believe her.

But soon Lucy and her siblings find their way through -- not knowing that peevish Edmund (Jonathan R. Scott) has already allied himself to the evil White Witch (Barbara Kellerman) who keeps Narnia locked in winter. She's especially desperate, because Narnia is beginning to thaw out, now that leonine Aslan is coming back to it, and the Pevensie kids have shown up to fulfil an old prophecy. But the Witch won't go down without a massive battle -- and one that might destroy the lion-messiah himself.

"The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" is a mixed bag -- it has more or less equal measures of good and bad. What it also has is deep fidelity to Lewis's original book, which was one of the first major fantasies to get widespread attention. And that's definitely an important detail, since the spirit of the book could easily have been lost.

The filmmakers obviously did their homework, crafting the script and dialogue to be close to Lewis's novel. And it's a credit that they pulled off some lines that could have sounded idiotic ("You're not dead, Aslan!" "Do I look dead?") in the wrong hands. They also did an excellent job of changing atmosphere, shifting from the stodgy English country house to the airy frozen Narnia, with its castles and dewy wildlands.

Unfortunately, the special effects haven't aged well. They were state of the art at the time, but now they look quite cheesy and low budget, with a few exceptions -- the scene where Lucy restores various "statued" people to life is pretty good. The other stuff ranged from primitive bluescreen to an enormous puppet playing Aslan. It's a good puppet, and remarkably convincing physically, but it still makes Aslan look like he has a wicked case of arthritis.

The acting is also divided between good and bad. Scott is particularly good as the "bad boy" Edmund, who ends up falling in with the Witch, especially when he turns on his evil mentor. He is accompanied by some good acting from Sophie Cook as Susan, and Richatd Dempsey as Peter, who also has to do a convincing battle with a werewolf. The weak links are Wilcox, who speaks most of her lines in a whine, and Kellerman, who laughs madly, coos and shrieks, and generally hams it up like a lunatic.

While the new version of "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" has captured the imaginations of moviegoers, the BBC version is still worth taking a look at.