Entertainment

01:20 PM CDT on Friday, April 7, 2006

By NANCY CHURNIN / The Dallas Morning News

Two hundred eighty-million dollars later, it's hard to believe it took Hollywood more than half a century to tackle C.S. Lewis' beloved The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Sure, there were animated versions and live-action BBC adaptations with actors striding around in itchy animal costumes. But producers seemed spooked by the fantasy, the Christian themes and the Englishness of it all. That, of course, was before the runaway success of Harry Potter , The Lord of the Rings and The Passion of the Christ.

Andrew Adamson, director of the cheeky animated Shrek and Shrek 2, may have seemed an odd choice for such an earnest work. But a few minutes with him on the second disc's DVD extras and you feel his intense love for the material and desire to re-create the way he saw the books in his head when he was a kid.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the first and the most popular of the seven-book Narnia series, even though its publisher has since shuffled the order of the set to reflect the chronology of the stories. Four siblings (Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy) go to the country home of an old, eccentric professor to escape the London bombing raids of World War II.

Once there, they find a mysterious wooden wardrobe. They hide in it only to find that it leads to a strange world called Narnia, where a white witch makes it always winter and never Christmas. There, as Narnia's creatures (centaurs, fauns, unicorns, giants, goblins, satyrs and talking beasts) take sides, the children must decide whether to ally themselves with the witch or with Aslan the Lion.

The youth of the children skews the movie, like the books, to a younger audience than The Lord of the Rings or even the later Harry Potter books. But the themes it tackles are powerful enough to engage all ages: courage, trust, betrayal, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, redemption, love.

Before you can draw the kids into the emotional and spiritual truths of a fantasy, you have to make them believe in the place, which Mr. Adamson does by making the most fantastic creatures seem absolutely natural. Another triumph: although this big-budget film is his first live-action movie, he trusted in the appeal of the story (for which he co-wrote the screenplay) instead of trying to draw audiences in with stars. The four child actors, all affecting in their parts, were unknowns. And the fine adult actors are far from the kiddie draws of the Shrek films: Jim Broadbent as the professor, Tilda Swinton as the witch and Liam Neeson as Aslan's voice.

Most remarkably, the film shouldn't disappoint either those looking for Christian imagery or those seeking something more universal.

E-mail nchurnin@dallasnews.com

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

A-Starring Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Tilda Swinton, Jim Broadbent, James McAvoy and Liam Neeson. Directed by Andrew Adamson. PG (for battle sequences and frightening moments). 135 mins. $29.99 (single-disc DVD or UMD for PSP), $34.99 for two-disc DVD.