With a storyline lifted by C.S. Lewis from the Good Book itself (God said “thou shalt not steal,” not “thou shalt not plagiarize”), Disney’s new version of The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe tells a charming tale of good versus evil. We meet the wardrobe-infatuated Pevensie children, who stumble through a doorway to another world where the totalitarian magic of a bad-tempered White Witch makes it always winter and never Christmas. At the children’s arrival, the land begins to thaw and the lion Aslan, Narnia’s true king and the crux of this Christ story, descends from God-knows-where to save the day.

Thanks to CGI, good looks good and evil looks evil (though Tilda Swinton’s White Witch certainly makes evil look good). Scenes previously left to the imagination are gorgeously rendered, Aslan is as touchable and terrible as Lewis wrote him, and the wicked hordes of the Witch are vivid enough to earn the movie a PG rating. In the land of Narnia, looks aren’t deceiving: in the battle of Good v. Evil, Lion v. Lady, handsome centaurs v. scabby hog-beasts, the well-groomed take all. An enjoyable Hallmark card of an introduction to the forthcoming series, the moral complications of Lewis’ Christ allegory are swallowed by the fuzzy goodness of the Lion, but the fantastic grandeur of Narnia and her mythic residents remains faithfully intact.