Bridge To Terabithia (2007)

Apparently, my school didn’t like to stick to standards. While we were reading Catcher In The Rye and Brave New World, everyone else was reading Bridge To Terabithia by Katherine Patterson. Since I had never read the book, I was fooled by the previews into thinking Bridge To Terabithia was going to be somewhere between Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe (2005) and Pan’s Labyrinth. Since I’m a big sucker for the fantasy worlds of CSS Lewis and the like, Bridge To Terabithia seemed like it would be right up my alley, so I made sure to add it to my queue at blockbuster.com.

After spending the past few weeks dealing with the Holidays and simultaneously re-designing the site, we’ve had Bridge To Terabithia sitting on my table for weeks. With visions of code overwhelming my brain, I finally decided to take a break from site design today, and settled in to watch Bridge To Terabithia today…and discovered the film wasn’t exactly what I’d been expecting.

Bridge To Terabithia shows that newcomer AnnaSophia Robb really has some acting chops behind that hauntingly pale face. While a lot of the film is geared toward children and young adults, her acting puts her performance in a whole other category. She manages to give the audience a sense of the depths of her character with every gesture, and viewers will find themselves watching her almost as intently as her co-star Josh Hutcherson does.

Sadly, however, her performance so far outshines her co-star Josh that he seems unable to cope with his solo scenes. He gets a bit of help from a very large-eyed Zooey Deschanel, as a caring teacher and Robert Patrick as the gruff father, but he still isn’t able to make the scenes flow as smoothly without AnnaSophia. Her character is a breath of fresh air in his life, and his character. This may be partly what director Gabor Csupo was aiming for, but it still makes the film drag a bit when AnnaSophia isn’t around.

The themes of Bridge To Terabithia are a bit too realistic. Life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be all the time, and everyone needs an escape now and again. In the case of these two kids, they escape into their imaginations, and create a wonderous place for just the two of them. It seems like it’s a basis for a good fantasy like adventure, but the viewer is never able to really escape into the other world with them, as director Csupo keeps reminding the viewer over and over again that this magical land is only in their heads.

Then, suddenly, just when the viewer thinks they’ve got the movie figured out, a twist is thrown in out of the blue, and suddenly the film is about dealing with loss. Everything’s fine, then boom – everything isn’t. It’s a shock, and rains on the viewer’s magically-inclined mood. Then, when that isn’t really dealt with in the manner expected, the movie ends. It does try to go out on a high note, but it isn’t the fairy-tale ending fantasy viewers expected going in.

When the director does let viewers escape into this magical land the kids have created in their imaginations, the special effects crew doesn’t let them down. True, viewers only get occassional glimpses of this realm of the imagination, but those glimpses leave viewers wanting more – especially the giant who is easily recognizable as having characteristics in common with a classmate they both fear and pity. These glimpses leave the viewers wanting more – but they never really get it.

With it’s previews seeming to tout the film as the next great thing in the Narnia vein, a lot of viewers looking for high adventure and magical lands will be sadly disappointed by this film. From the special features on the book, those who grew up reading the book will be sadly disappointed as well, as the issues in the book do not seem to be dealt with as deeply in the film.

All in all, Bridge To Terabithia is one film where I wish I had read the book first. It would have given me a better idea what to expect, and I would have approached the film with a whole different attitude. As it is, with it’s misleading previews, I approached the film thinking it was going to be another fantastical adventure and – despite AnnaSophia Robb’s brilliant performance – came away disappointed…and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

Bridge To Terabithia, at it’s core, is a story of a childhood friendship…just don’t go in expecting loads of fantasy, because reality is the mainstay in this film. Save the fantasy expectations for Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)