WhatzUp - Leisure Time Weekly for Northeast Indiana

Bridge to Terabithia
by Catherine Lee

How weird is it to not have a television? In Bridge to Terabithia, when Leslie, the really cute new girl with the stylin’ clothes, has to admit that she can’t complete an assignment because it involves writing a paper on a television show and her family doesn’t own a televsion, the other fifth graders gleefully make fun of her. I couldn’t quite get my bearings while watching Bridge to Terabithia, and I mean that as a compliment, but some timeless coming-of-age elements helped reassure me.

Be different and you will face ridicule. Kid, teenager or adult – no matter the time or place – that’s a life lesson worth seeing worked out on screen over and over, especially if handled with as much simple grace as it is here. In Bridge to Terabithia Leslie and Jesse are different, and their differences are as rewarding as they are challenging. As an older person watching the film, I know the drill. The things that make Leslie and Jesse outcasts will help shape them into stronger, more thoughtful people.

I went to the theater in my favorite pre-movie mode: knowing only enough about the film to simply get me to the theater. I knew Bridge to Terabithia was based on a Newberry Prize-winning coming of age novel for kids, and the trailer looked cool. But even that was almost too much information. The previews for the movie prominently feature the special effects ahead. But Bridge to Terabithia isn’t about special effects. There are effects, and they look great and kiss the story in just the right way as grace notes, but they are not the center of the story.

Bridge to Terabithia is a very old-fashioned movie. The Disney logo at the beginning of the film is newly enhanced, well, at least to me, and this is very much a Disney picture. What happens is about kids, parents, teachers, siblings, school, bus rides, bullies, chores and the kinds of feelings, worries, problems and misunderstandings that arise from these basics elements of life. After awhile I settled down and stopped expecting big special effects around every corner, but I still had issues. Where is this movie happening? When is it happening? I am embarrassed to say that not being able to answer these simple questions made me very restless.

Bridge to Terabithia is a very enjoyable film, but except for the special effects scenes it is shot in a very flat, straightforward way. Most of it looks more like an after-school special, not a feature film. It is Disney in feel, but not Disney in look, until we get into the imagination and the tough stuff.

Eventually, I was able to let that time-and-place fixation go. I just accepted that this was a distant suburb of someplace with lots of woods and space, and plenty of televisions, except at Leslie’s house. I accepted that even though it must take Leslie lots of time and shopping to assemble the wild outfits and elaborate accessories she wears in every scene, she’s still the kind of girl who has half a pack of Juicy Fruit in that wacky backpack of hers. I accepted that she has this very sharp sense of style without the influence of television, even though she looks like a Nic network princess. I’m not sure where or how she gets her hair done, but I accepted the little braids and doo-dads.

I had a harder time getting used to AnnaSophia Robb. She gives a delightful performance as Leslie, but looks so much like she could be Keira Knightley’s younger sister that I had to keep saying, “she’s a fifth grader, she’s a fifth grader.” The eighth grader who bullies her looks and acts so much less sophisticated that it is a relief when they get past the bullying. Leslie finds one very good friend in her new school. Conveniently, he lives next door and is the second fastest kid in the fifth grade. Josh Hutcherson seems a bit older as Jesse than the average fifth grader as well, but he has older sisters at home, and that changes a kid. Jesse is the only boy, and he has four sisters, an exhausted mother and an overworked and stressed father.

Leslie and Jesse share a talent for speed, a bus stop and the bullying of schoolmates. As they become best friends, his talent for creating beautiful drawings and her imagination for stories and fancy spark a deep bond. They swoop together across a stream on an old rope swing and make the land beyond the water their own kingdom, Terabithia.

Tragedy strikes, as it must for this story to transcend the typical tween storyline. When it does, what has been portrayed as a very common collection of folks changes subtly and rises beautifully and believably to comfort Jesse. Bridge to Terabithia is Jesse’s story, and when the world changes, we see everyone change and see them more closely from Jesse’s new perspective. The most beautiful of these is Jesse’s father. Robert Patrick, an underworked talent in most pictures but not here, plays an impatient but not unkind father to Jesse. When Jesse blames himself for the film's tragedy and blurts out his guilty feelings to his father, his dad responds just as a wise father should. He is completely reasonable, convincing and comforting to his son. His authority is just as assured as when he’s telling Jesse to pull his own weight, but his voice and actions offer a real embrace.

Jesse believes his dad when he’s told that just because he has a crush on his music teacher (the divine Zooey Deschanel) and selfishly wanted to spend the day alone with her, that did not cause the tragedy.

This sets Jesse free to continue his vivid imaginative life – or at least saves a lot of therapy later in life. But that’s just my cynical self talking. Bridge to Terabithia let me check that certain self for awhile. So for the young and the young and sentimental at heart – those of us grateful that Tinkerbell still flies around the Disney castle – Bridge to Terabithia has more than enough fairy dust to fly.

Catherine Lee is the executive director of Fort Wayne Cinema Center, the only independently operated movie theater in Fort Wayne, specializing in independent, foreign, documentary, specialty and classic films.