The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

So far The Chronicles of Narnia films have been fairly middle of the road - decent enough without being great, close enough to the books to be recognisable without being close enough to please the purists. The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe was slightly better than the disappointing Prince Caspian.

The good news is that The Dawn Treader is probably the best of the lot so far as a film. The bad news is that the improvement isn't huge and the straying from the book might not please the Lewis fans.

So on the plus side, its the best looking of the films so far. The Dawn Treader itself looking beautifully done. Its also helped in this respect in that it isn't trying to stage epic battles for the fate of the world with a cast of about 50, which always looked less impressive than it should have. The acting is also better than in previous films, with Son of Rambow's Will Poulter a good addition as Edmund and Lucy's cousin Eustace.

On the negative side, the final act descends into a mess of (literally) flashy special effects that are unnecessary and  a wee but confusing. Also the replacement of Eddie Izzard (one of the few highlights of Prince Caspian) for Simon Pegg as the voice of Reepicheep is a definite backward step

As far as faithfulness to the book goes - all the books story elements are there, but are added to. In some cases, (the extra real-world details at the start) this works well in adding depth to the characters and the period. Most controversial will be the decision to add an over-arching battle against a vaguely defined force of evil on top of the quest to find the seven lords. I can see why they did it - it gives the story a more over-arching, less episodic structure, but it still feels unnecessary and actually detracts from the final scene with Aslan at the edge of the world, with now feels like an epilogue rather than the climax of the story. Its also a shame that along the way we lose some details like the reason Eustace ceases to be a dragon.

Overall - 6.5/10 As a film, its a slight improvement and solid mid-range family entertainment. As an adaptation of Lewis' book, it leaves something to be desired.