The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Narnia films come to their ostensible end with Michael Apted’s mediocre Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a sea tale in which the two littlest Pevensie children travel back to the magical realm to rescue lost swords, destroy evil and react to special effects. They are joined on this quest by their priggish, annoying cousin Eustace, a character who becomes bearable only once he’s turned into a cartoon dragon. Georgie Henley and Skander Keynes are fine as the young heroes Lucy and Edmund Pevensie, but the unmemorable qualities of the first two films have made it impossible to find an emotional stake in either the characters or their fanciful adventures. All that’s left to fill the void is nattering CGI critters, unimpressive 3-D effects, a meandering narrative and a few straggling threads of C.S. Lewis.