Movie: Bridge to Terabithia

This is a Disney movie. It’s rated PG. I heard good things about it, so I rented it. We sat down as a family last night and watched it.

Um. *spoiler alert* The girl in the movie DIES. Uh. HELLO???? Totally NOT what I was expecting. It came out of left field for me.

From Amazon.com:

Jesse, a fifth-grade loner, lives in the country with his parents and four sisters…Money is tight and classmates make fun of his hand-me-downs, so Jesse finds refuge in running and drawing. Everything changes when Leslie moves in next door. The two soon bond over their love of make-believe. In the forest, they find a creek that can only be crossed by rope. Leslie names the land on the other side Terabithia, where they imagine themselves rulers of the kingdom.

For the most part the movie (which is based on a young adult book) was well done, but I did find some faults with it. I remember the trailer for this movie basically implying this movie was like “Narnia,” but this movie is no Narnia -very little of the movie actually takes place in Terabithia. I don’t know how faithful the movie was to the book, but the movie almost felt like a sketch of the plot, rather than an in-depth faithful re-telling.

Despite this, I found myself bawling like a baby when the shocking twist took place. I turned to Denis and said, “Wow – I didn’t see THAT coming!” Fortunately, CB wasn’t really paying attention to the movie at that point (he kept asking to play Lego Indiana Jones throughout the whole thing) so he didn’t seem to be affected, and CG was quietly watching on the sofa, but didn’t seem overly traumatized (she may not have really understood, since Jesse seemed to deny that Leslie was dead for the first few scenes after her death and continue to speak as though she were alive).

It’s hard to rate the movie. I liked it despite the flaws. So maybe I’ll give it 3 cries of “free the pee” out of five.