Of course, while the score compliments a sense of whimsy, it's Jules Cook's, Ian Gracie's, Karen Murphy's and Jeffrey Thorp's art direction that truly establishes it with lavishly transportive tastes in location, enhanced by unique and intricate production designs, which are themselves enhanced by slightly dated, but then-amazing and still-strong digital effects. There is the occasional lame original song soundtrack bit, but outside of that, the great Harry Gregson-Williams' score carries a rather formulaic heart that goes flavored up by some refreshing and dynamic touches, as well as a certain stylishly modernist whimsy that both proves to be lively by its own musical right and helps in capturing a sense of wonderment. There's a lot of potential here that is ultimately lost in the wake of questionable storytelling and censorship moves, although potential remains so prominent that underwhelmingness is just barely fallen to, at least when that potential is emphasized by many a strength in both storytelling and artistic value. There are some audacious elements here, but on the whole, there's something kind of neutered about this family 'epic', and such laziness makes it all but impossible to ignore other issues, which are limited in quantity, but keep consistent enough to wear down the final product, until it slips into underwhelmingness. Familiarity makes it somewhat easy to see natural shortcomings in this mini-epic, but what really holds this film back in simply its being too safe, for although this film is neither as cheesy nor as lazy as many other Disney dramas which work to appeal to both fun-loving youths and more hard-edged grown-ups, a sense of tension and wonderment is limited by both limitations in attention to consequence, and bloating to fluff. Of course, investment in this subject matter is worn down enough by being so frequently practiced by other high fantasy films of this nature, until the final product comes out as not too much more than a formulaic family fantasy affair. Meanderings and a lack of focus aren't too considerable in severity, but they are recurring enough to hamstring what is conceptually an epic as it works its way along an ostensibly intricate pat, settling a sense of scope and wearing down investment. About as loose as the control of tone is the control of pacing, whose unevenness is reflect in a runtime of about two-and-a-half hours, which writers Ann Peacock, Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely work to achieve through a sometimes aimless excessiveness to filler, all but balanced out by some shortcomings in the extensiveness of characterization. Sure, the film rarely tries to get all that heavy, yet it still has a tendency to break a whole lot of tension for the sake of overly fluffy, maybe even cheesy moments of comic relief, in additional to a tendency to pump a generally light heart with a touch too much bite, however tight the limit on bite may be. Oh well, at least that would be a good way to make wardrobes more interesting, because, make no mistake, people, this is a pretty fun fantasy flick, even though I have problems with it that extend beyond Christian overtones.

Well, okay, maybe it hasn't become that hard to find a wardrobe after the 1940s, but people, if you have a wardrobe, about how often do you visit to pick out something other than a drug stash? Shoot, after this film, I'd imagine there were a lot of people who stopped doing that with their wardrobes, because, like I said earlier, this subject matter is bound to creep into the minds of some potheads when they're around a wardrobe. I wish I could find stuff this cool in a wardrobe, but that isn't ever going to happen, not so much because Christianity is far-fetched enough when it's not interpreted into something like this, but because it's not too much less likely to find any type of wardrobe anywhere in this day and age. Man, it gets even trippier when you actually see the film and start finding all sorts of anthropomorphic critters, and James McAvoy as a goat man, and, most disturbing of all, Christian overtones. Seriously though, that is one seriously overlong title, although it does sound like quite the acid trip. Yeah, I've heard of having skeletons in the closet, but this is an awful lot of interesting junk to hide in a wardrobe, so I don't guess it would be the most convenient closet-type location in which to hide the pot stash that you might need for a film like this.

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