Bridge to Terabithia (2007)

Here is a real-life not a make-believe story that will make anyone but the most coldhearted stone-troll cry -- but it's real life from the eyes of two budding adolescents, so it's ideal for that age range yet emotionally overwhelming for younger children and never as focused as an adult would prefer. I had never heard of Terabithia until I saw the Web stats on most-downloaded movie trailers (which will leave you wanting much more from this film, if you see it with the Narnia-like expectations the trailers present). This movie feels like another (but lesser) Eragon: set in rural America and skipping from plot step to plot step faster and more perfunctorily than you can say "just read the script," the storyline feels like it was penned by the audience it's about and for: 13-year-olds. Yet this is also the movie's strength, since it incarnates an authentic sense of what it's like to be a preteen "good kid" in a tough crowd (the average school). The two child stars go through the motions of the script as far as adult moviemaking standards go, but they ably embody the nuanced angst (puppy love, adventurousness, peer pressure, naked fear, etc.) of true-to-form youth. In fact, I wasn't aware of how sympathetically my 9-year-old son and I had connected with them until tragedy struck. It's unfair to spoil a key plot element for those who have yet to see a film, so I can only say we tearfully wept for the rest of the movie and were quite sad and depressed about it for at least another hour. (I would have been very angry with the makers of Shiloh if they had killed off the dog star in the end, so I was incensed with the makers of this movie and my son was heartbroken.) The boy star's do-your-chores farmer father redeemed himself with a sensitive, father/son bonding scene and his youngest sister revealed her gift as she stepped into a brave new world, but the fantasy-forest dimension of this movie will always leave you panting for bigger and better scenes of the denizens. I would give this movie 4 stars for that element and 2 stars for betraying us emotionally, so I give it 3 stars on balance. Still it was authentic emotion and empathy so it was a movie-watching and a human experience unlike few we have yet shared. 3 stars.