I usually talk more about science and history and such here at GlobeLens, but having had an opportunity to watch the latest film version of C.S. Lewis' second Narnia book, I feel compelled to share my impression.  I promise to be honest, and to be fair.

The final reaction you feel after viewing a movie of which you knew the entire story before you began, depends largely on what you expected to see.  Low expectations are like to produce, in the end, great thrill.  High (too high) expectations, on the other hand, will always disappoint.  I'm afraid I fell for the second option.  For although director Andrew Adamson's (a coincidental surname) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has clear merits and stays true to Lewis' novels in form, I felt cheated at the loss of what it could have been.  Let me get right to my objections:

• The film is not about Aslan.  They are about Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.  Aslan is a secondary, if prominent, character.  Now someone could argue that the book is not about Aslan, that Lewis intended the children to be the antagonists and so on.  I agree, but if you take the The Chronicles of Narnia as a whole you can't help but come away with the feeling that the Great Lion, and not the miscellaneous human children who are supernaturally drafted into Narnian service, is the real thing.  The children are participants in great events.  Aslan, we get the feeling, is who plans the events.  Not so in Adamson's film.  The conflict and climax revolve around the four Pevensie children and their relationship with one another.  While this theme is also present in Lewis' novel, it does not carry the story's moral force.  Aslan does.
• The film's Aslan lacks a multifaceted character.  As a result of casting Aslan as an important secondary figure, he lacks the attractive qualities which drew us to him in Lewis' work.  Lewis' Aslan is powerful, is gentle, mysterious, and clever.  He is both terrifying and magnetic.  Someone who would both hurt you and heal you, as he thought you needed it.  Someone who would kill, or would die in another's place.  In Lewis' Narnia, Aslan was always 100% in control of the outcome, even when it didn't look like it.  Unfortunately, the film gives Aslan a rather one-sided personality.  Yes, he exhibits happiness and anger and sorrow, but for some reason it isn't genuine.  Sitting in the theater, I felt like Aslan was pulling my leg.  I longed for a return of Lewis' Aslan, one who would chase Susan and Lucy around the broken Stone Table after his resurrection, and who would lick Susan's forehead to prove he wasn't a ghost; who would rebuke Lucy for wanting to watch Edmund's recovery from battle wounds, instead of quickly taking her healing cordial around to other casualties.  In short, I wanted Aslan to take over the film.  I was disappointed.  To be fair, I expect there will be extra footage in the DVD release of Wardrobe, and perhaps Aslan will take a greater precedent then.
• While I can't quite put my finger on this one, it is still a point that bothers me:  The film version lacks the profound implications present in all of Lewis' works.  Anyone familiar with Lewis' writings are aware that he was a deep thinker, the sort of author whose paragraphs need to be read over twice to really get your mind around them.  However, the film seems to me to be a simplistic rendition, a moral tale in which only the trimmings of the deeper truths are leftover.  I may be mistaken in this opinion, since after all I knew the story before even the previews began.  The next time I watch the film, I'll try to forget everything I know, and watch it like the average non-Narnia guy.  I wonder, will I be suspicious of deeper truths in the film, or will they all be swallowed up in the fast-paced action?  Sadly, there is little compunction to watch the film again.  It was so devoid of clever or insightful lines that I feel like I saw everything I needed to the first time around.  (Again--I already knew the story)
• I was strongly displeased at the portrayal of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.  In Lewis' work, the Beavers are a quaint couple (talking beavers, if you don't know the story) who are kind and considerate of one another, living in happy harmony and peace within their beaver dam.  They are the ideal picture of perfect Grandparents, albeit young ones.  So attentive are they to one another that Mr. Beaver, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, stoops to put on his wife's snow-boots for her, even though she has been delaying them all in their escape from the Witch's wolves.  (Of course part of his motive may have been to speed her along.)  In any case, such an action would seem sorely out of character with Adamson's Beavers.  His Beavers are a middle-aged, bickering duo with whom veiled sarcasm is more prevalent than accolades.  So debased are Adamson's Beavers that Mr. Beaver is supposed to have had the habit of sneaking off to a rowdy friend's house, and deceiving Mrs. Beaver about it.  In the film I only recall one genuinely kind remark from Mr. Beaver to his wife, occurring just before they meet Aslan.
• These last things are perhaps nit-picky: 1} The White Witch of the new film is much more intelligent, evil, and perhaps seductive than can be found in Lewis' novel.  She has much less fear of Aslan and is infinitely less transparent than the original.  2}  The concept of forgiveness is a bit less prevalent in the film.  In the book, Mr. Tumnus' asks Lucy to forgive him (she does), Peter shakes hands with and apologizes to Lucy for not believing her, and Edmund, after his betrayal and restoration, shakes hands with each of his siblings in turn, and says, "I'm sorry."  3}  Also, when Father Christmas meets the children and gives them their gifts, he gives a special word of instruction to the two girls.  To Susan he says "You must use the bow only in great need, for I do not mean you to fight in the battle."  In the film the latter half of that sentence is pointedly missing, for obvious reasons.  To Lucy Father Christmas commands (in the book's version), after giving her a dagger, "You also are not to be in the battle."

"Why sir?" said Lucy. "I think--I don't know--but I think I could be brave enough."

"That is not the point," he said. "But battles are ugly when women fight."

While the inclusion of these lines in the film would clearly have risen ire with the standard-bearers of feminism today, it poignantly demonstrates the difference of thought between Lewis' time and ours.  Lewis understood there to be a difference between the sexes that extended even to tasks and vocation.  He believed men had a duty to protect women, unlike us, who send our sisters out into the front lines in the name of equality.  Lewis would have balked.  Gladly, the film does not show any female characters in the midst of the fight that I can recall, and in one of the best lines in the film, a hard-pressed, sword-wielding Peter yells out in despair for Edmund to "take the girls and go."  Go home, that is, through the Wardrobe.

Having listed all my broodings, here are the film's positive aspects:

• This is a high-quality production.  The costumes, special effects, and scenes are superb.  The talking animals, including Aslan, are all computer generated characters who appear remarkably life-like, even when they talk.  Only twice or thrice could I find elements that betrayed the cinema origin.  Amusingly, there was no blood shown in this film (there is plenty in the books), even after a sword is drawn out of an opponent's body.  This, apparently, was to help achieve the film's family-friendly goals and rating.  The battle sequences are reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings films, though toned down.  Besides that, your only other concerns I can imagine will be the evil and seductive Witch and the frightening beasts and creatures that accompany her, especially during the scene in which Aslan is killed.
• I thought the Pevensie children were wonderfully cast, and constantly amusing, especially the charming Georgie Henley as Lucy.  The White Witch and Mr. Tumnus didn't appeal to me.  I am biased in favor of 1988 BBC/Wonderworks rendition of The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe, in which the White Witch is played by Barbara Kellerman.
• Susan is a much more colorful character in the film, than in the book.  This could be positive or negative, depending on how you look at it.  She is less meek, and perhaps more feminist, than Lewis' Susan, especially when she challenges Peter's authority as the eldest and tries to assume a mothering role to her younger siblings.  In the end she seems to realize she has become too rigid in her ways.  Definitely more colorful.
• Mr. Tumnus and Edmund meet in the Witch's dungeon, and the Witch, before turning Mr. Tumnus to stone, tells him it was his fellow captor Edmund who unwittingly ratted on him for "fraternizing with humans."  A nice extra.

Well, that's my review.  There is a debate going on over the method by which the Narnia film has been promoted--through churches and specifically evangelical groups.  Also, the not-so-subtle Christian themes of the Chronicles is raising a ruckus among some people--especially those who are openly hostile to Christian doctrine, like Polly Toynbee, or those who are openly hostile to Lewis, like Philip Pullman.

Others like Doug Phillips raise some perhaps legitimate concerns with some of the elements of Lewis' original Narnia novels, with their inclusion of characters corresponding with pagan Greek gods.

But in the end, don't let all this get your eyes off Aslan.  He's the main thing.