Stealth Entertainment
Bridge to Terabithia
By Scott Lumley
September 18, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.
Hopefully we'll stumble across some entertainment that may have slid under your radar. Wish us luck.
Bridge to Terabithia (2007)
I've been writing this column for almost three months now, and I have to admit, what was once a little bit of a chore has turned into something very nice. The original premise of this column was to look back at movies that have come and gone and see if we perhaps missed something good. As a result of that I've already stumbled over a movie that I consider an absolute masterpiece (Gone Baby Gone). Of course, with the good comes the bad, as I also reviewed Shoot'em Up, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Wild Wild West. Still, if I get one classic for every three pieces of dreck, I'm going to consider myself lucky.
This week's selection is Bridge to Terabithia, featuring Josh Hutcherson as Jess Aarons, AnnaSophia Robb as Leslie Burke, Zooey Deschannel as Ms. Edmunds, Bailee Madison as May Beth Aarons and Robert Patric as Jack Aarons. This movie isn't what I consider a classic, but it's pretty different from what I was expecting and I have to say the producers may have marketed this film entirely wrong as I was under the impression that this film was a kind of Narnia-esque romp.
It's not. I was so very wrong with that impression. There is some fantastic imagery throughout the movie, but it's very peripheral to the main plot of this film.
Bridge to Terabithia revolves around Jess Aarons and his miserable middle school life. The only boy in a family full of girls, a poor kid in a school full of jerks, Jess is lonely and quiet and takes solace in two things, running and drawing. The movie opens up with him arguing with his mother as she has just discarded his pair of sneakers on the day of a big race because she won't have him seen in a pair of completely worn out running shoes. Naturally, the ones that she replaces them with are shoes from one of Jess's older sisters and are pink.
Now, middle school was a long time ago for me. A long, long time actually, but I'm still pretty certain that having a beat up pair of running shoes held together with duct tape is infinitely better than a pink pair of running shoes if you're a boy. But this is Jess's life. It's indignity topped with insult and sprinkled with a crunchy layer of aggravation.
Jess does what he always does, which is to swallow it and move on, and he gets on the bus and goes to school. En route to school, he's tormented by the school's female bully, and taunted by two jerks in his class, which is incidentally taught by a complete hardass. Anybody who claims they wish they were a kid again should watch this film and see what Jess goes through every day. I know some adults that would break down in tears if they had a day like Jess's.
And the capper of the day is the big race. Jess lines up with the rest of the boys and a new girl (Leslie Burke) in class lines up with them. Some of the boys protest her inclusion but Jess surprisingly shuts them all down with a comment that suggests they must be pretty bad at running if they're afraid they'll be beaten by a girl. And in what can only be the purest form of foreshadowing, she does beat them all. Jess is angry with himself obviously, but Leslie remembers his small kindness at the beginning of the race and strikes up a friendship with Jess, despite his numerous protests.
The film is a little over the top showing Jess's school and home life. It's tough by anyone's standards. How a 12- or 13-year-old boy could deal with this is anyone's guess. There's not one, but three relentless and cruel bullies flowing in and out of his life and nobody ever seems to take his side. A couple of times in the movie Jess is blamed for things that the bullies have done and the adults side with the bullies. I remember as a kid thinking that adults were morons, and this movie seems to think that they are criminally so. I can understand the necessity of making Jess's life tough, but it really feels like the film went to extraordinary lengths to pile on the misery and it just feels a bit forced.
At any rate, Leslie and Jess bond and become friends and start to play in the forest out back of their respective homes. They start to develop a fantasy world back in the woods and that's where all the fantastic imagery from the commercials comes into play. Some of these effects are quite well done, but it still feels like a bit of a bait and switch here. Still their friendship and fantasy world start to develop and grow, and Jess starts to come out of his shell a little bit. At one point, there's an incident with some lost keys and Jess's Dad (Played by Robert Patric) starts haranguing him as Jess searches for them. Jess turns around and plants his feet in the ground and shuts his dad down with one sentence. It was a nice moment and really reflected the change in Jess.
That's really what this film was about - Jess growing from a boy into a young man. It was well done and well written. Every time Jess took responsibility for something and righted a wrong or even apologized for something he had done, it was a little victory for him, just like it is for any kid who's trying to figure out how to grow up.
So while the movie starts out like a little bit of a cliché, it does slowly side into something else entirely. And just as it starts to really develop on this, something truly awful happens. It wasn't even hinted at in the commercials or the trailers for this film and I was taken completely by surprise when it happened. I wouldn't call it a twist per se, but it was a major change in plot and it really shook me up when I was watching.
It was at this point that this movie moved from so-so to pretty good. People rally around Jess to help him deal with his pain and guilt. And what pain it is. Jess practically seethes rage from what happened and he has no idea how to deal with it.
It's worth pointing out that while we really didn't see any Oscar worthy performances in this film, there certainly were some good ones. Robert Patric played a wonderful father. Sometimes he was a jerk, other times he was the solid rock that Jess needed him to be. At other times he was an exhausted dad trying to raise five kids on a broken down farm just barely keeping things together with both hands. I don't know if Patric was drawing from his own experiences or just making it up as he went along, but it felt right and was probably the best acting I'd ever seen from our former terminator.
Hutcherson also does a good job playing Jess. He suffers through the indignities of his young life as best he can and when Leslie comes into the picture he starts to mature. Josh does a nice job with this and he makes something that could have easily been comical and overacted very subtle. Robb also does a good job with Leslie as well, but it's a little too perky and relentlessly positive. Some of the choices she makes are a little hard to buy into. Even her one attempt to be vindictive makes her feel terrible, and she ends up consoling someone who was relentlessly cruel to her.
So while this film is a bit misleading, I don't have a lot of issues with it. It may have been marketed as a fantastical romp into a world filled with fairies, trolls and giants, but it's really a well done coming-of-age story that revolves around a pair of young friends. It starts out rough, but turns into something interesting and memorable by the end. And if that's not ‘magical', I'm not sure what would be.