Review of Bridge to Terabithia (2007) by Duncan K — 16 Sep 2013

I can tell that this movie is at least trying to capture child like imagination. Unfortunately, for me, this one falls pretty flat, though not as hard as something like "Shorts". Josh Hutcherson is pretty much as wooden as all his other performances, with his face either set in "odd stare" or "overly whimsical". We see he gets bullied by two , really not that intimidating, bullies for wearing girly shoes that his mom gives him. Okay, what parent would do that? It's very minor but it bothers me on a lot of levels. He seems to develop a friendship with AnnaSophia Robb, who, I swear to god, has the creepiest permanent look on her face. They begin to talk about creating a fantasy world together because......whatever. I wouldn't mind this so much if the girl and boy shared ideas and didn't act like it was actually real. For one, their in middle school and seem a bit too old for this. And two, the girl is disturbingly precise with everything in this fantasy world and constantly thinks she's actually in it. This gets borderline psychotic with how she reacts to a tree falling on their tree house while they're inside. Later on, when a bully gets the boy kicked off the bus, the boy's sister gets revenge by forging a love letter by the bully. which leads to them finding out that the bully is being abused. Okay, one, you can't just juggle plot lines around like your a bloody Star Wars prequel. Second, bringing in a very sensitive subject matter, like child abuse, in a kids movie with magical fantasy worlds seems very out of place. Later on we meet the girls family which is so sappy and whimsically painful to watch, it makes Full House look like Breaking Bad. They go back to their fantasy world, and battle random bad CG gophers in their little world. After that they come across a giant that has the abused bully's face. I guess it's supposed to be symbolic, but I don't get it. After that awkward looking CG diarrhea, the boy gets a call from his teacher (Zooey Deschanel) to go with her to the museum. Okay, coming from someone who wants to become a teacher, this is goddamn creepy. This movie already has psycho girls, and child abuse, we don't need pedophilia here too. When the boy comes home from...his "date" with his teacher (cringes), we see that the girl died. Um....forced much? To the movie's credit it tries to handle it well, showing the guilt the boy's going through. But the girl wasn't really developed that much and didn't have a personality other than being obsessed with this world, so it really doesn't leave much for me to feel sorry. In a movie like "Stand by Me" it works because Chris had a personality, developed as a character, and behaved like a normal kid, thus making it more sad. In this movie the girl is so underdeveloped and weird that I just sort of shrug off her death.

Overall this movie had potential. The pieces were there for a great movie. But it's just a cluttered, awkward mess. Stale, and often very forced, characters. The fact that it tries to shove the whimsy down your throat until you poop rainbows. This is one I probably won't see again.