It’s not a rip off of Narnia. A lot of those animals are the people’s “daemon’s.” I guess that they’re like their soul which take animal form. This book leads to about as anti-Catholic themes as you will find. He attacks God’s work in the Garden of Eden.
Ah...I didn’t know the animals were the “demons.” They didn’t explain that in the previews I saw.
Nonetheless, it looked like a stupid movie, and after reading about the anti-God themes in it, that only worsened its case.
From the Amazon.com review:
For one thing, people there each have a personal dæmon, the manifestation of their soul in animal form. For another, hers is a universe in which science, theology, and magic are closely allied:Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of Christianity knows that comunicating with demons is, how you say, "frowned upon"? Pulman is either an occultist, or he is being used by the demonic.As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had dæmons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them.
In either case, stay the hell away.