.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Here we go again. Another movie based on a popular best-selling novel whose pages have never graced my nightstand. In fact, unlike the Harry Potter series (another adventure string of books that I have no time or desire to engage in reading) I had never even heard of Bridge to Terabithia before the trailer started appearing at my local theatre. Had the commercial ads not informed me that it was based on a novel, I would have been none the wiser.

Anyone that has read my rantings over years knows that I don't invest the time in the turning of printing pages. For the most part I have argued that this negligence has put me in a good position when it comes to reviewing films based on literary works. I don't have to worry about pre-conceived ideas on what characters should look like, differences between page and screen plot points and entire chapters or characters that are left out of the movie experience for any number of pacing or continuity reasons. I go in with a clean slate and I don't have to go much further than The DaVinci Code to tell you how much less frustration I seemed to devour than those who had read the book multiple times before their big screen experience.

Bridge to Terabithia, based on the book by Katherine Paterson, is the story of two children, Jesse Aaron (Josh Hutcherson) and Leslie Burke (Anna Sophia Robb) who escape all the troubles and pressures of school bullies and parental ignorance by entering into an imaginative, creative world they call Terabithia. In Terabithia they have powers that are limited only in their imagination and are surrounded by fairies, trolls and some hedgehog looking creatures that snarl and attack with ferocious intent.

Both Jesse and Leslie are in need of some distraction. Jesse comes from a home where his father's attention is fractured between his five children and the incoming bills are more than the incoming income. At school, Jesse is even more displaced. Bullies rule his adolescent world and his young sister hangs on him giving him little time for the things that children take for granted in modern day society.

Leslie has just moved to town and become Jesse's neighbor. Her family is a little more functional, but with both parents being writers, she glides under the radar when each new book is in production. She too finds trouble in the schoolyard where the female bullies have such a stronghold on the recess population that they can even dictate who has access to the public washroom.

Their escape to Terabithia was a welcome distraction.

Bridge to Terabithia perplexed and challenged me in many ways. From the ads, I thought I was in store for a fantasy adventure. Instead, I was subjected to a childhood drama that felt more awkward than rewarding. As the minutes past tirelessly through the screening, I kept anticipating the trolls, the giants, the special effects that seemed so predominant in the marquee posters (me, and the hundred or so children that also looked disappointed and confused over the lack of fantasy). You really have to wait until the final scene before you are finally graced with the presence of CGI, which again would be fine if that is what you were expecting and forked out the cash for at the box office ticket counter.

Further scrunching my brow was the knowledge that Bridge to Terabithia was a Disney release. This made the subject matter explored in the adventure even more head scratching. Child abuse, a conversation about the existence and punishment of God, and the death of a main character made me uncomfortable - probably due to an understanding that 99% of the audience brought their younglings to the screening not knowing they would be subjected to such heavy handed plot topics.

And then there was the few special effects in the film. The small creatures in the forest, the fairies, the troll, the attacking birds. The effects were so cheesy and unrealistic that I could not believe that the studio that the mouse built was behind the operation. It was as if they wanted to make another Chronicles of Narnia, but got Roger Corman and Terry Gilliam to helm the project.

Bridge to Terabithia will be a film that might make its modest budget back in ticket revenue, but be warned, this is not a movie for the very young, and there is nothing there for the adult customer. So just who did they make this film for?