Bridge to Terabithia
This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!
Kent Turner -- School Library Journal, 2/14/2007
The marketing campaign for the new film adaptation of Katherine Paterson's Newbery Award-winning classic (HarperCollins, 1977) misleads, emphasizing the special effects-laden kingdom of Terabithia. Yet, while these fantasy sequences do come close to dominating the film halfway through, the movie, cowritten by Paterson's son David, stays faithful to the book in word and spirit, with only moderate updates to the present.
 |
|
Annasophia Robb as Leslie and Josh Hutcherson as Jess |
Josh Hutcherson's understated performance captures the awkward timidity of farm boy Jess, whose hopes of being the fastest runner in the fifth grade are dashed when he's beaten on the first day of school—by a girl, no less. Worse, the winner, Leslie, has just moved in next door. The only boy in his family, Jess has no friends his own age, only his adoring sister May Belle (Bailey Madison), and she's just six. As in the book, Jess and Leslie's episodic adventures form the backbone of their developing friendship.
For those with lingering memories of Donna Diamond's illustrations, the movie's biggest divergence from the book comes with the casting of Annasophia Robb as Leslie. No longer an androgynous tomboy, Leslie is now cute as a button, peppy and pixieish. She's also something of a colorful fashion plate. As Jess's hippy-chick music teacher Mrs. Edmonds, Zooey Deschanel seems to have sprung right from the page. It's more than understandable why Jess has a crush on her.
 |
|
Zooey Deschanel as Ms. Edmonds and Josh Hutcherson as Jess |
In her book, Paterson devoted only fleeting paragraphs to Jess and Leslie's imaginary world. In the movie, that universe expands to include elaborate flights of fancy, complete with dragonflies as flying miniature warriors, pine cones as grenades, and armored hedgehoglike creatures. A subplot at this point, exclusive to the movie, begins to feel like filler; but then the plot turns, dramatically and unsentimentally. (Spoiler alert for readers unfamiliar with the story: You may not want to read on, even though the plot twist really
is the story.)
 |
|
Josh Hucherson as Jess |
The script smartly follows the book's narrative—incident by incident—after Leslie's death. Handled straightforwardly, the tragic circumstances have a strong impact, especially the scene where classroom teacher Mrs. Myers (Jen Wolfe) consoles her pupil Jess. An earlier conversation involving Leslie, Jess, and May Belle debating the existence of God and hell is also taken almost word-for-word from the page—though Leslie's summons to the spirits of the woods have been cut, and are not missed. Moving and well acted, the film is a throwback to the days, back in the '60s, when Disney (one of the film's producers) made ambitious live-action family films like
Pollyanna,
The Three Lives of Thomasina, and, love it or hate it,
Mary Poppins.
(Photos courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures/Walden Media.)
Directed by Gabor Csupo
95 min.
Rated PG.
