Bride to Terabithia

Review by Ava Cadabra

THINGS THIS MOVIE CONTAINED:  Child outcasts, an imaginary kingdom (which is rarely seen), family problems, the always lovely Zooey Deschanel.

THINGS THIS MOVIE DID NOT CONTAIN:  Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu, exploding boxes of Cap’n Crunch, the song “Fat Bottomed Girls” being played in a first grade classroom.

The Review: Based on Katherine Patterson’s book of the same name, Bridge To Terabithia tells the story of two child outcasts: Jess, the lone boy in a lower-class large family, and Leslie, the quirky new girl down the road who unexpectedly becomes his best friend. To escape from their often crude reality, they create an imaginary kingdom called Terabithia, where they rule together as king and queen.

I have no doubt in my mind that this is a touching story, sure to pluck the heart strings of any human being. However, this specific story is only effective in the narrative sense, not visual. This film does not capture the magic like it should.

Terabithia is depicted as the ultimate escape from real-life hardships, and henceforth should have been displayed as such. Instead, all we see is two kids running around a marsh, throwing an occasional rock and talking about what they imagine. We rarely, if ever, get to share in the visions of Jess and Leslie’s minds, and are left bored and un-amused. If we got to see what they envisioned (for more than the measly collective 5 minutes of the entire film that we were given), this film would have been far better.

With that being said, the redeeming highlight of this film comes from three of the child actors’ strong performances. Josh Hutcherson as Jess, AnnaSophia Robb as Leslie, and Bailee Madison as May Belle (Jess’ younger sister) delivered some of the strongest acting seen from child actors in the past five years. Perhaps even Jessica Alba or Hayden Christensen should take a few notes from these kids.

Complaints:  If there isn’t more than 5 minutes of actual fantasy type visuals in the film, DON’T make the trailer seem like it’s the next Chronicles of Narnia. That’s far too misleading. Stretch your budget and show us what they were imagining, don’t just have them narrate it. I can look out my damn window at kids pretending to be Power Rangers and it would have the same effect.

On a side note: Once, I imagined a kingdom for myself, and it came into existence. I call it Fuzzletopia.

Ninjasaurus Rex:

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