Review

Review Date: 12-December-10
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Juicy

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

With Prince Caspian (2008), screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely collaborated with director Andrew Adamson to spin a well rounded story from a meandering book whose only distinction is being part of a famous whole. For The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Markus, McFeely, and Michael Petroni, along with director Michael Apted, were faced with a different challenge. The third book in C. S. Lewis' Narnia series has more drive than its predecessor, but it's not the stuff of film. Eschewing the traditional setup-crisis-resolution structure, Dawn Treader recounts the loosely connected adventures of a group of intrepid seafarers. It pays tribute to the spirit of exploration, the impulse that sends some people (and talking animals) to find out what lies on the next uncharted island, and the next, and the next. This is why its major new character embodies rigidity. Representing the opposite of the urge to sail to the edge of the world, he highlights the nobility of this urge by contrast, and the story's only concrete goal is getting him to embrace it.

Not trusting the marketability of a juvenile Odyssey, the movie's creators attempt to add cohesive elements to the plot, which do not work as well as they did in Prince Caspian. After familiar heroes Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund (Skandar Keynes) tumble through a painting into their beloved Narnia, they reunite with their friend Caspian (Ben Barnes), who is now king, for a voyage to unknown lands. To everyone's dismay, Lucy and Edmund are accompanied by their cousin (Will Poulter), whom Lewis describes in immortal fashion at the opening of his book:

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and his schoolmasters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none … Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card.

The newcomer to Narnia needs a lesson in how not to be a wanker, and he receives it with the help of a magical makeover and that exemplar of Mousehood, Reepicheep (voiced by Simon Pegg). Meanwhile, the movie steeps Lucy and Edmund in the same ailments of female and male adolescence which their older siblings faced before. This results in my chief disappointment with the deviations from the source: the rushed stop on the island of the Dufflepuds. As a child I was riveted by Lucy's nerve-wracking approach to the magic book from which she must read an incantation, yet here her act involves no suspense, just the girlish desire to be pretty. There is also a newly invented enemy called "the mist" which appears as a sinister green miasma and, like the best movie villains, has its own evil island. Defeating the mist becomes the glue that binds the episodes together. To do so, the shipmates must place seven swords on Aslan's Table, a feat in which the reborn Eustace plays a crucial role.

Poulter was a good choice to play Eustace, who takes center stage in the next (and best) chapter of the Narnia tale. Let's hope that since he has grown so much in this installment, the movie version of The Silver Chair can keep its classic fairy tale form without any doctoring. Viewed as pure escapism, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader didn't need any doctoring either. But even with alterations it satisfies as a fantastic voyage touched with nostalgia.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.