BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA

PG (bullying, dangerous situations, mild profanity)

Disney/Walden Media, 2007

On the day the film premiered, I was substituting for a fourth-grade teacher.  In order to calm the class down after lunch recess, the teacher usually read a portion of a "chapter book.”  The selection for this day was the emotional last couple of chapters of the modern classic Bridge To Terabithia.   (NOTE: This is all the spoiler you'll get from me!)  We had a little free time since we were ahead of schedule for the day, so we entered into a discussion about our expectations of the film.  As this was one of my favorite books, I had some misgivings, especially since Walt Disney can be notorious for revisions.

I should not have been so concerned.  Walden Media, who did an admirable job of bringing the Chronicles of Narnia to film, gave Terabithia the same attention to detail.

Jess Aarons (Josh Hutcherson) is the fastest runner in his class.  That's his claim to fame in the impoverished Virginia community where he lives with his family, and that's about it. He keeps his art skills under wraps for fear of ridicule from his father (Robert Patrick, The Unit) and classmates, who torment him anyway.  His five sisters, except for May Belle, ignore him. 

All that changes with the arrival of a new girl, Leslie Burke (Anna-Sophia Robb). Leslie quickly gets on Jess's bad side by beating him in a foot race, invalidating his "fastest runner" status.  To make matters worse, her quirky ways prove a barrier to her making friends.  Since the two keep finding themselves shunned by the other kids, they end up becoming friends. 

I have to give the producers praise at this point.  While making the two leads older than the fifth-graders portrayed in the book, I was happy to discover they didn't even hint at anything other than a Platonic friendship between the two.  And that was the only divergence from the book!

Wandering off into the woods surrounding their houses, Leslie begins concocting tales of a fantasy land called Terabithia, inhabited by a myriad of creatures.  At this point, the CGI folks create a rival for Narnia as "best movie fantasy land.” (Note: On www.terebithia.com author Katherine Paterson comments that the name may have unconsciously come from a place name in one of the Chronicles of Narnia books, an island called "Terebinthia.”)

As their friendship develops, Leslie's lack of inhibition gets her into situations engaging people where they are, and takes them in directions they wouldn't have gone otherwise.  One instance of this has Leslie pulling a prank on a tough female student and discovering the victim is a bully because of beatings received at home. Leslie manages to break through the bad girl's hard shell and makes a friend of a school bully.

Also involved with Jess and Leslie is the off-beat music/art teacher (Zooey Deschanel, Elf), who uses music class to sing cheesy 70's songs accompanied by guitar.  She invites Jess to an art exhibit in Washington, DC. But while they are gone, tragedy strikes at home, and Jess quickly has to come to grips with death and the afterlife.   It is at this point that a subtext of Christianity dealing with Hell takes center stage, with Jess tormented over people going to Hell because they didn't "accept Jesus.”   This is a conflict teased off and on throughout the whole film as a secondary plot.

Katherine Paterson noted in interviews that she originally wrote the book as a means of helping her son cope with the real-life death of a neighbor who had been fatally struck by lightning.  As a Christian, she thought it vital to deal with the attendant questions of whether or not children who die will go to Hell. Both the book and film do a fine job of exploring these questions, though it seems the film dispenses with that resolution a little too quickly.

The two leads turn in excellent performances, as does Robert Patrick as the stressed-out father who is finally required to work up some tenderness to carry Jess through his grieving.  This brings out a vulnerability in Patrick that his TV roles in The X-Files and The Unit have not required of him, and he rises to the occasion.  The Walden Media special effects crew bring the same high visual quality to Terebithia that they brought to Narnia a year earlier.

This film, recently released on DVD, may be a bit overwhelming for the youngest of audiences with its themes of death and violence; but other than that, it is a fine and conversation-provoking film for pre-teens and adolescents.

by Mike Stidham