- Studio: Fox-Walden
- Release Date: Dec 10, 2010
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80Michael Apted opts for a certain dated and mannered appeal with a whiff of nostalgia for more innocent times, which lends added enchantment.
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75The Dawn Treader doesn't so much reinvent the "Narnia" franchise as do what's needed, and expected, with a little more zip than the previous voyages.
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75The eye-popping and entertaining The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader offers a merry seafaring jaunt together with plenty of adventures led by magically empowered kids.
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75After all, it isn't every kid's movie that wrestles with the subject of faith in a higher power, or sin, or the afterlife. And it isn't every kid's film that can do it so entertainingly. Sure, that's heavy stuff if you're looking for it. But it doesn't spoil the great, great fun to be had in Narnia - or the magical spell it casts - if you're not.
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75This is a rip-snorting adventure fantasy for families, especially the younger members who are not insistent on continuity. Director Michael Apted may be too good for this material, but he attacks with gusto.
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75True to the intent of the Christian apologist Lewis' novels, there are lessons to be learned, many of them delivered by the chivalrous mouse, Reepicheep, voiced with a plummy verve by Simon Pegg.
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70The beguiling creature design--from minotaur to dragon, sea serpent to one-footed dwarf--and 3D effects heighten the illusion of a storybook coming alive, while the rousing sea adventure drives home Lewis's Christian ethos better than either of the previous entries.
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70Well-paced, well-performed and full of visual wows, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader bobbles a hectic story by stopping just short of committing to its grounding themes. Its hardly sacrilege, but it does seem like a shame.
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70Apted seems too often to think like an old-hand action director and not enough like the 12-year-old boy who probably read Lewis's book. To enter Narnia, to really go giddy with the bright, laughing promise of a quest, a young viewer with no convenient magic portal of his own needs characters to bring him along. This is, I believe, the difference between a classic and a successful franchise reboot.
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67Michael Apted's direction veers into listlessness, but there is, at times, a pleasing elegance to the production, too. It doesn't assault you. Small favors are better than none.
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67The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ends on a perfectly appropriate note, recapturing a childish sense of wonder and an earnest approach to Lewis' religious allegory.
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63Maybe it's the postproduction 3-D enhancements, but in this effects-laden Odyssey for tweens, sometimes humans and beasts seem more wax-and-paint than flesh-and-blood.
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60Kids, of course, are unlikely to get the religious allusions. All they'll see is a decent family adventure, perfectly suited to a cold Saturday morning -- and likely to be forgotten by Sunday.
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60The best thing about the film is neither the top-notch CGI nor the shallow moral lessons but the performance of Will Poulter ("Son of Rambow") as Lucy and Edmund's insufferable cousin Eustace Scrubb.
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Dec 9, 201060Another mixed Narnian offering which, while it doesn't bust through the series' three-star ceiling, at least gives us its best FX, biggest monsters and finest child actor yet.
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50It's difficult to make this mediocre adaptation of perhaps the best-loved book in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series -- seem particularly interesting.
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Dec 10, 201050If only the makers of Dawn Treader had learned the lesson Lucy does when she casts that forbidden spell: Don't try to be something you're not.
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50Alas, in the third instalment of the C.S. Lewis odyssey, the devolution continues with the inexorability of a fairy tale thrust in reverse – the sublime first film morphed into the routine second and now this wispy banality.
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50The third and most uneven film adaptation in the series.
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50A strong filmmaking voice was clearly not called for in an entertainment that has been carefully calibrated for maximum blandness. Mr. Apted is aboard to keep the franchise sailing along or at least afloat, which he does.
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50It's serviceable, but certainly not much fun.
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50Dawn Treader, the name of the ship in the story, should here be rechristened Yawn Treader. If this movie were a bedtime book, the wee ones would be asleep by page two.
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50Oh, there are sword fights aplenty (as bloodless as ever), but instead of a real story, we are left clinging to individual moments.
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50The Dawn Treader, like its predecessors, has no real struggle or drama. We're dealing with kids for whom everything comes too easily for us to care.
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50Only two characters are worth much notice; neither is a prince, and one is a really big mouse, which tells you something sad about Narnia's royal family.
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50I'm confounded by the fact that, aside from the Pevensie siblings and their nicely obnoxious cousin, absolutely everything and everyone aboard the Dawn Treader looks one-dimensional.
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50A dull, meandering storyline and visuals all-but destroyed by a second-rate 3-D conversion make this movie inferior to its predecessors.
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42They essentially replace the book's blank spaces with gaping plot holes and laughable clichés.
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40It takes great skill to make something so ponderously stultifying as this third film entry in the ongoing adaptation of C.S. Lewis' series of splendidly imagined children's books.
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40One's heart sinks the moment the trio is picked up by Prince Caspian (Barnes) and deposited on his ship, the Dawn Treader. Suddenly we're in green-screen land, where everything looks cheap, heavily digital and unfortunately postconverted to 3-D-hardly a fantastical otherworld.
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40This f/x-heavy third adaptation of the Christian-themed fantasy series feels routine and risk-averse in every respect, as if investment anxiety had fatally hobbled its sense of wonder.
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40After slipping badly with the second installment two years ago, the Narnia franchise does a full-on belly flop with this third.
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38An utter shipwreck, a would-be adventure with meager rations of magic and a listless crew.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 26 out of 42
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Mixed: 9 out of 42
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Negative: 7 out of 42
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