The Bridge to Terabithia is a children's movie in desperate need of a sugar rush.
The recent release is the first full-fledged cinematic take on the 4th-grade reading list staple. Jesse Aarons (Josh Hutcherson) is a 6th-grade introvert from the sticks, a beleaguered only son from a large, ostensibly poor family. When a new girl with a boho chic sensibility moves next door, Jesse is seduced into friendship by her aggressive friendliness and forced joviality. Jesse and Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb) soon spend most of their free time together, exploring the forest and creating a "magical" version of their daily lives, which they call Terabithia.
In Terabithia, the school bully becomes a gigantic forest troll; mean kids from class become squirrels and crows, and a tree house becomes Jesse and Leslie's private, happy household. Their therapeutic ramblings in the imaginary kingdom are ended, however, by a sudden tragedy that launches the kids out of childhood.
Not that they were so childlike to begin with. Leslie gives direction to almost all the imaginings, but after every line the actress turns toward the camera and gives a slow, sexy smile. Not that Leslie's seductive style is limited to her line readings: there is that slow-motion glamour shot of Leslie running through the rain. The actress just seems too much the precocious pre-teen for the children's part she is meant to play. Hutcherson is more convincing as a pre-teen loser, but even he seems too much the archetypical strong, silent type to be relatable to anyone with a sense of irony. He manages to appear less self-conscious than Robb, and his acting is refined enough for emotion to be read on his face in every scene. Unfortunately, Hutcherson has to project almost all of his emotion through his face or body language; the character he plays is so quiet and self-contained that there are few active displays of feeling.
Still, though Leslie grates and Jesse bores, the kids who surround them at least feel vividly real. Jesse's family and classmates are flawed, but all feel refreshingly uncloying and relatively morally complex.
If the movie had stuck to the real world of Jesse's school and family, it might have been an honest, earnest melodrama. But half the time, we are forced to watch the kids "play" in Terabithia, a world too wracked with their daily problems to be a fun escape, but too mired in the clichés of the fairy tale to be interesting to the adult viewer. Nor is the cheap CGI much recourse. We are forced to watch kids play pretend games for most of the movie, and forced to watch them go to school for the rest. Such a plodding view of the movie's focus is reinforced by the lifeless camera, unremarkable sound track and unspectacular special effects. There are a couple of "wow" moments, but they are the result of shockingly unrealistic mechanical prowess on the part of the kids, rather than built-in suspense or spectacle.
Sadly, the movie tends to follow the pacing and limited experiences of real children at play. It meanders without buildup or climax. Katherine Paterson is said to have written the 1970s novel as a response to real-life events in her son David's life, and the unmelodramatic melancholy of both the book and movie is its greatest virtue. However, in the novel, Jesse's thoughtful narrative of sweet childhood love and loss has more time to develop, and Terabithia can become as intricately imagined as the reader wants. But on film, the introspective point of view falls flat, and it becomes a cheap knock-off of Narnia.
More creatively imagining of the magical kingdom, and toning down AnnaSophia Robb, would have helped this particular film. Perhaps the novel is too far from melodrama, and the pace of fiction, to make an affecting, but unaffected, movie.
The Bridge to Terabithia may be fun for kids young enough to relate to the stolid Jesse or the blooming Leslie. But for adult viewers, waiting through the 95 minutes can feel like an expensive chance to baby-sit.
