'NARNIA' OFFERS UP FANTASY THAT WON'T SCARE THE KIDS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

FILMED ON a couple of continents and tricked out at most of the major special-effects facilities on the planet, ``The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'' finally comes to semi-live-action life.

Enchanting in spurts, moving now and then, and rather faithfully extrapolated from the first volume in C.S. Lewis' beloved Christian allegory, ``LWW'' could not help but come off as a junior-league ``Lord of the Rings'' any way it was made. But keeping in mind that this is fantasy adventure designed for a pre-pubescent audience, the film is pretty well-calibrated.

True to its PG rating, there's just enough scary stuff to keep matters suspenseful. The Lessons to Be Learned only get Sunday-school boring a time or two. And even though the big, climactic battle sequence won't give Peter Jackson (or, for that matter, Mel Gibson) anything to worry about in the visceral CG department, there is something pretty cool about seeing talking animals of all kinds duking it out with Cyclopes, Minotaurs, centaurs and dozens of other mythological critters.

The whole shebang's most compelling element, though, is a rather wonderful youth-empowerment theme that, unlike what we see in most children's films and literature, really earns its pumped-up positivity. Setting has a lot to do with that. Published in 1950, ``LWW's'' young heroes, the four Pevensie children, are driven by strong psychological needs to cope with the dislocation and mortal terror of World War II. Carp though they do about having to unite and fight for the future of their strange new world, that's exactly what their Blitz-blasted souls require for survival.

Evacuated to a nutty professor's country estate from Luftwaffe-ravaged London, our young heroes - responsible eldest Peter (William Moseley), the trouble-prone Edmund (Skandar Keynes) whom Peter constantly criticizes, nondescript teenager Susan (Anna Popplewell) and the baby, forthright little Lucy (Georgie Henley) - discover a very large armoire while playing hide-and-seek. It proves to be a portal to the parallel world of Narnia. And after a fairly slow start, the kids become embroiled in serious quest-adventure stuff.

Narnia has been ruled too long by Jadis, the White Witch. Played by a game Tilda Swinton in upswept dreadlocks, great furry frocks and what appear to be huge black contact lenses, Jadis has locked the land into a permanent winter that the arrival of the human children, prophecy foretells, will turn to spring and the end of her reign.

So, naturally, see sends all of her wolf minions and monsters out to get them. Jadis also tries to seduce resentful Edmund into coming over to the dark side (with candy, folks; remember that PG rating)

Luckily, though, the Pevensies have a couple of talking beavers (amusingly voiced by Ray Winstone and Dawn French) to guide them to their savior. Who's kind of like Jesus. Only he's a lion, called Aslan, and sounds like Liam Neeson. Aslan is all good, makes the ultimate sacrifice and has the power to restore life to all creatures, real and imaginary (if I'm not mistaken, I think I even saw him resurrect a Wookie).

This is the first movie with real people in it directed by ``Shrek's'' Andrew Adamson. By nature, it lacks most of the ogre cartoons' wit, but Adamson often manages to evoke something like the same storybook charm. Performances are adequate enough across the board. Oddly, it's the digital imagery, which Adamson has more experience overseeing, that sometimes wobbles.

Real mammals are especially difficult to virtually re-create. Sometimes the movie's wolves and some other beasts look unconvincingly off. On the other hand, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are among the most expressive CG characters we've seen to date. Aslan kind of splits the difference; plus, it's hard to tell which of the lion's scenes are computerized and which involved animatronics, which is more a compliment than not.

Overall, though, it's quite an array of fantastic visions that Adamson and the animators had to create, and the very scope and depth of their mission is impressive. And when it comes to combining human elements with animal parts, as in the case of James McAvoy's faun Tumnus, the work can be quite striking.

Like ``Harry Potter'' and ``LOTR,'' the Narnia films could get better as they go along. ``LWW'' isn't a bad start. It might not be the richest or best-told fantasy fable of the modern era, but the movie does have a palpable sense of magic, and that's the key element these things need.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE - Three stars

(PG: violence, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Tilda Swinton, James McAvoy.

Director: Andrew Adamson.

Running time: 2 hr. 15 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Another multibook British fantasy series hits the big screen, not as awesomely as ``Lord of the Rings'' nor as cleverly as ``Harry Potter.'' But there are a good many cinematic pleasures and narrative niceties in this tale of four children's fight to save a mythic world from evil, bad stuff and more evil.

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Georgie Henley, left, Anna Popplewell, William Moseley and Skandar Keynes enter a magical world in ``The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.''