THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH, & THE WARDROBE

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe, director Andrew Adamson's imagining of the first book in C. S. Lewis' Narnia series, is almost childishly clunky, but it's nearly impossible to dislike. Geared, as it appears, toward a very young audience - I'd say seven or eight - the movie is sweet, and it's sincere, and it displays a welcome touch of fairy-tale simplicity. Despite the rather prosaic nature of its presentation, Narnia is one of those movies that, if it catches children at the right age, might linger in their memories for some time to come; it's just magical enough to suggest how magical it should have been. For kids who are finally seeing their beloved Narnia novel translated to the big screen, Adamson's Narnia will be good enough. It just doesn't have much to offer the rest of us. Adamson is co-director of the Shrek movies, and he does a fair enough job with the movie's CGI wonders; the lion Messiah Aslan (voiced, to the surprise of no one, by Liam Neeson) moves with regal grace, and the beavers who accompany the Pevensie children on their quest seem to be, for kids in the audience, enjoyably frisky characters. But all throughout the film, I had the nagging feeling that, if he was allowed, Adamson would have happily computer-generated his humans, too.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is something unusual: a movie wherein everyone involved appears to be having a good time. Of course, you could say the same about Cannonball Run or Ocean's Twelve, but the difference here is that the audience is allowed to have a good time, too. Based on Douglas Adams' cheeky, beloved sci-fi novel, Hitchhiker's Guide, which has been in various stages of film development for the better part of two decades, is a goofy, oftentimes glorious mess of a movie. If George Lucas and the Monty Python troupe ever spawned, the results would look something like this; I started smiling during the film's opening credits and only stopped to occasionally laugh out loud.

IDENTITY and CONFIDENCE

By some bizarre coincidence, this past weekend saw the arrival of two new films, Identity and Confidence, that share an almost frightening number of similarities.

FRAILTY

Until it flirts with supernatural looniness in its last reel, Bill Paxton's directorial debut Frailty is a strong, scary, deeply affecting piece of work - so good, in fact, that it easily ranks, thus far, as 2002's finest film achievement.