The Chronicles of Narnia was probably the first "trilogy" that I ever read, when I was a kid.  I don't remember my exact age, but I must have been ten or younger.

I was enraptured and enthralled by the books - even now, Aslan remains in the childhood memories as an ultimate force of Good.

I had a chance to see a sneak preview of this movie last night at the Kabuki theaters, and because of my childhood memories, was fairly excited at the prospect.

However, I have never re-read this trilogy, and, now that the movie has been released, I must come to the reluctant judgment that the story of the books, most likely don't wear well, as one gets older. 

At least in my judgment of the movie, there were simply too many jarring discrepancies between the plot, as dictated by the movie, and my own internal sense of the flow and internal logic, within the movie.  However, the graphics in this movie were simply amazing - Aslan in particular being a highlight.

What do I mean by that?  Simply that there were some "momentous" scenes for children, forced to quickly grow up, that rather than being meaningful, struck me as fairly cheesy  (I'm not going to say which scenes, or give away the movie).  This didn't seem to be the movies fault, however, but probably is the fault of the books - like I said, I'm not sure they wear well into adulthood.

Given that, why do I recommend the movie?

The main reason is because the graphics are just simply spectacular - really, just amazing.  Aslan, and the voice of Aslan, were picture and tone perfect.  The animators did an incredible job of capturing the Aslan of my childhood projection, and seeing him up there on the screen gave me goosebumps, and made my heart do a little jump for joy. 

The battles.  The flow, and the smoothness, believability of all the various and sundry characters in Narnia, was done amazing well.  Like with the latest Harry Potter, the smoothness and detail on the characters keep getting better and better, and in this case, struck me again with that sense of "wondrous awe", that I treasure so much.

The actors were children, and a bit wooden.  They two girls were believable, but the male characters are the ones that strayed into cheesiness.

At any rate, my two cents..