Or, as Peter Jackson calls it, "a storyboard." Disney's big attempt to reap Lord of the Rings-sized profits out of C.S. Lewis' fundie-friendly parables is a surprisingly ordinary affair, slow to get going and only occasionally reaching the level of true spectacle. Its quartet of British war orphans (mediocre actors at best) take their sweet time in discovering the magic realm that lies at the back of the titular clothes closet; the adventures they finally find there seesaw crazily between honest whimsy (talking beavers! Yay!) and narrative ennui (loophole-filled prophecies! Boo!) Most shockingly, the look is budget-minded Euro-cheap, full of excessively darkened CG passages, underpopulated battle sequences and other cheats. The major resources appear to have been devoted to the leonine hero, Aslan, who moves and speaks with a naturalness that withstands the closest scrutiny. Befitting his status as a Christ symbol, he's the one element of the film that qualifies as a true inspiration – if only to the makers of this nation's cat-food commercials, who now have a new standard of graceful mouth movement to shoot for.