My seven-year-old thought The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was "awesome," and I agreed. We discussed dragons all the way home, and the first thing I did when I got there was to telephone a friend who designs and builds yachts, and who had been looking for ways to make boat-building more creative, to tell him to see it at once. The ship as well as the effects, I told him, were, well… "awesome." The storm scenes are wonderful.
The good Minotaur in the Dawn Treader's crew, and of course that murine D'Artagnan, Reepicheep, are completely convincing. The moment when the Eustace-dragon fights the monstrous sea-serpent -- the first brave thing he has ever done -- is genuinely thrilling. As Casablanca and countless other tales show us, there is something in everyone who is not completely spiritually dead which answers, if it is properly done, to the spectacle of the cynic or the bad guy coming good in a crisis.
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