Posted on 02/16/2007 9:56:53 PM PST by Milwaukee_Guy
A 10 year old boy and a 10 year old girl combine their art and writing talents to create a magical kingdom. Not being like all the other kids and not being fully appreciated by their parents, they embark on their own fantasy journey.
Evoking images of the "Chronicles of Narnia" and "Harry Potter" Disney paints an image of a high tech journey into yet another magical realm that children and parents can both enjoy and share together at their local theater.
HUGE SPOILER - Scroll Down at your own risk! - - - - - - -
Jessie and Leslie spent an hour and fifteen minutes feeling the taunts of their peers and the demands of their parents and begin to fantasize about a kingdom they create on a piece of abandonned property next to their homes. Fleeting glimpses of magical creatures begin to draw them into their new world.
Before the fantasy world really begins to start there's only one small problem.
Leslie (Anna Sophia Robb), venturing to their secret meeting place alone. falls off the rope they use to swing over the creek and CRACKS HER HEAD OPEN AND DROWNS.
The balance of the movie depicts the shock, horror and sadness that Jessie, his family and Leslie's parents endure during the aftermath of Leslie's demise. Jessie makes ammends with his little sister and the movie sputters to a fitfull conclusion with Jessie building a wooden bridge over the creek that Leslie drowned in.
The last 45 minutes of the picture found the audience in a shocked silence.
As we left the theater 5 to 8 year olds were crying and holding their parents as they trudged off to their cars.
This -is- an exceptionally -good- movie but my goodness IT IS DEPRESSING!
"Bridge to Terabithia" defeys classification as either a children's movie or as an adult movie. Disney had to know that to be the case and chose to market the movie as a lighthearted fantasy journey.
Bottom line, it's really an adult movie being passed off as a kids movie. Notice the PG rating on this one.
I wouldn't take a pre-teen to this movie knowing what I know now.
Regardless, it is an outstanding movie. Jessie and Leslie (Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb) put in exeptional performances for child actors and will do very well in the future.
This movie gets my 4 out of 4 hankie rating!
This is a classic book. There's not much excuse for an adult not being able to find out what it's about before taking the kids. The book was published 30 years ago and is based on the author's son and a friend killed by lightening.
I think this could be a mistake for Disney, because much of their reputation is based on, "If it's Disney, it's safe to take the kids." Heck, they even made Hunchback have a happy ending.
Exactly.
Children *can* handle drama that deals with themes such as loss and pain.
Or should be dump Charlotte's Web and Bambi while we're at it?
It was an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie where a kid found a ticket that allowed him to enter his favorite action figure's movie. I have never been so embarrassed in my life sitting between my prim proper grandmother and my young kids listening to all the cussing and violence.
Tonari no Totoro is our favorite family Miyazaki film. For more mature audience, Howl's Moving Castle (Hauru no Ugoku Shiro) is beautiful.
This plot sounds like it is more appropriate to one of those novels that high school students are forced to read than it is to a story for smallish children.
Of course being the only female I cried like a baby and my hubby and both boys were neither crying or traumatized by the movie even though all expressed that it was a good movie with a lot of good life lessons.
When I asked my sons why they weren't emotional about the movie both told me "Mom, it's fiction, duh, it's not like it's real life or anything."
Of course being the overly emotional female that I am I bawled like a baby putting myself in the position of losing one of my children in a tragic accident. Somehow my boys were able to separate reality from fantasy, guess their dad has done a good job of balancing me out.
Good post! You echo my sentiments precisely. The fetching Mrs Atos and myself did a date-night preview before taking the boys. I had not read the book and had heard little about it, so I was slammed as was my wife. In the end, we were quite satisfied with the movie, but I dont think the same can be said for many of the children in the audience. Much sniffling. As it stands, I would encourage my boys to read the book, but the subject matter expressed in a movie is an entirely different kind of experence, imo. There was a time, do lets recall, before Hobbits and Harry's, when a boy's favorite hero was a frontiersman named Hawkeye who wielded an unforgiving Long Carabine in a far more brutal world than Terabithia.
Wish I saw this BEFORE SUNDAY.
I took my daughters (5, 9 and 11) and two friends (5 and 10) to this 'fun and adventurous' looking movie. Thought it was something similiar to Chronicles of Narnia. I'm having to explain ALOT 3/4 of the way through this movie to two five year olds who are blubbering and my older kids are just plain sad. This movie sucked to walk out of. Noone was smiling, noone looked happy. Sadly, this was the ONLY
'kids' movie playing this weekend. But looked online and said the PG rating was for "mild bullying". BULL!
Anyway, hate I missed this post.
I read this book when I was five or six. Good book.
Death is a part of life, folks.
Maybe because it was made from a kid's book?
And a Newberry (sp?) award winning one at that?
Probably because it is from a child's book. A librarian I work with just described it a kind of prototype Young Adult Literature book when the genre was just getting off. I just happened to read the book several weeks ago before I knew that a movie was coming out. I thought it was a dreadful book and certainly wouldn't want a child of mine reading it. The author is quite talented and I know good quality writing when I see it. But in the book, she mocks Christianity and praises paganism (although she is a former missionary and wife of a Presbyterian minister) and really makes the rural Southern family look bad.
So your read of this post is that the movie should be avoided because someone dies in it?
Yep. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. But that's my reading.
The saddest cartoon I ever saw was "The Plague Dogs" in which the two plucky dogs die - rather than the wonderful Richard Adams book in which the dogs live happily ever after.
I was furious!!
Only book I never finished because I was crying too hard.
I wondered if the movie would pretty up the ending. Guess not.
Classic movie. My mother recommended it to me as a kid and I loved it. But it took me years to watch Robert Mitchum in another movie without being freaked out.
That I find easier to believe than a prior poster's description of the author as a "Christian counselor." Maybe in this instance "Christian" is merely shorthand for somebody who thinks Jesus was a good guy, which seems to be the lowest common denominator definition used by people such as Hillary Clinton.
I thought the movie was terrific until it felt the need to comment on Christian theology. That seemed to be the tipping point in how I viewed the film as a whole. Suddenly it brought into focus the portrayal of the church-going family as dour and unsupportive, whereas the non-believing family is bright, open and fun. The death of the little girl even plays like a Christ metaphor, because her death seems to bring light and reconciliation to that repressed Christian family.
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