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  EW review: A spirited 'Narnia'Also: OK 'Indian,' pointless 'Presents'By Owen Gleiberman  Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) talks with Edmund (Skandar Keynes). YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(Entertainment Weekly) -- Alice, down the rabbit hole, tumbled into a Wonderland of vanity and vice -- the real world etched in satirical acid -- and her early-20th-century American counterpart, Dorothy, found Oz, with its surreal yokels and charlatans, to be just as crackpot a place. But when C.S. Lewis wrote his own variation on rabbit-hole metaphysics, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," in which he dispatched four very proper British children into the haunted and mystical winterland of Narnia, he wasn't fooling around, or even cracking a smile. You can read the seven volumes of the Chronicles of Narnia as a Christian allegory or as an ornate book of wonder (or both), but either way it's marked by the devout, almost pristine earnestness of Lewis' sincerity and gravitas. Narnia, a land of fauns, talking beavers, a dastardly White Witch, and a solemn savior of a lion, may sound like the stuff of filigreed fairy tales, but it's really a place of holy war, where the imagination darkens the more it expands. In the lavish, spirited, at times naggingly literal-minded movie version of the hugely popular first Narnia tale, you're often aware that you're watching child actors romp through a land of concocted creatures and special effects. The snow is too studio-set frosty, and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, voiced by Ray Winstone and Dawn French as an engaging pair of fussbudgets, come a little too close to the goofy polar bears in Coke commercials; you can see the digital seams. The centaurs, satyrs, and assorted other magic folk of the wood often look as if they'd just stepped out of a makeup trailer. Director Andrew Adamson, in his live-action debut (after "Shrek" and "Shrek 2"), stages "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" with a wide-eyed prosaic eagerness that reminds me a little of the Hollywood fantasy films of the late '60s. Even when Adamson brings off a lovely touch, such as the White Witch (Tilda Swinton) tempting young Edmund (Skandar Keynes) by creating ice sculptures that turn into fruit-filled Turkish Delight, we don't quite feel how the devilish dessert has corrupted the boy's heart. Yet the movie, for all its half-baked visual marvels, remains remarkably faithful to Lewis' story, and the innocence of his passion begins to shine through. It's there, most spectacularly, in Aslan, the lion-king messiah. For once, a computerized beast looks like he's talking, and he's voiced, by Liam Neeson, in velvet seductive tones of lordly compassion. Swinton, as the White Witch, makes a worthy enemy, rearing up during the climactic battle like a rock star of cold self-love. The war itself, with its digital tumult, will look familiar to anyone who saw the "Lord of the Rings" films, but if Peter Jackson did it better, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," by summoning C.S. Lewis' spirit, creates a different kind of spectacle -- a starry-eyed crusade. EW Grade: B 'The World's Fastest Indian'Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum The cockeyed devotion with which writer-director Roger Donaldson dramatizes the story of New Zealand motorcycle legend Burt Munro and his classic 1920 bike in "The World's Fastest Indian" is in direct proportion to the cockeyed devotion with which Munro himself pursued his lifetime goal of setting a land-speed record at Bonneville Flats, Utah, in the late 1960s. Munro, who died in 1978 at the age of 79, is depicted in this admiring specialty-act pic as a Crazy Old Guy With a Dream (and, as played by Anthony Hopkins in a full-throttle thespian joyride, as quite the Old Ladies' Man). Donaldson, who first trailed the real Burt Munro to make the 1971 documentary "Offerings to the God of Speed," makes his subject's every setback and advance an opportunity to applaud relentless Kiwi gumption. Reunited with the director some 20 years after the two worked together on "The Bounty," Hopkins savors every bit of business as his Burt charms everyone in his path: His friends include local toughs back home, and a fetching transvestite motel clerk in L.A. Munro was, apparently, the kind of coot who could knock on a stranger's door in the desert and end up in bed with a lively gal (Diane Ladd). Crank it, Grandpa. EW Grade: B- 'Mrs. Henderson Presents'Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman It took the blokes of "The Full Monty" the entire movie to doff their duds, but "Mrs. Henderson Presents" gets right down to the business of naughty bits. In London on the eve of World War II, Laura Henderson (Judi Dench), a widow of wealth and connection, purchases an abandoned theater in the West End. She hires a resident showman, the crusty Dutch Jewish impresario Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins), and together they devise a scheme to pack in the patrons: They'll stage impish theatricals with a sprinkling of topless chorus girls. Surprisingly, there is little local opposition; even the fusty Lord Chamberlain (Christopher Guest) agrees to allow the nudity, provided the girls in question remain motionless on stage. This makes for a friendly romp, and also a dull one: There is dialogue that begs the audience to go tee-hee ("We must have British nipples!" declares Van Damm), but there is no drama, unless you count the wallflower romance of Hoskins and Dench, doing the Britcom shtick that's becomes her version of autopilot. EW Grade: C Click Here 
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