Leslie Burke (played by AnnaSophia Robb) draws the audience into the world of Terabithia by saying, “Just close your eyes and keep your mind wide open.” Bridge to Terabithia may be too deep for under school-age children to grasp, but it is fully enjoyable for all.
Based on the children’s novel of the same name by Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia is a wonderful tribute to the beauty of a child’s imagination and friendships. It is about two lonely children Leslie Burke and Jess Aarons (Josh Hutcherson) who become friends and learn to conquer their real-life fears and frustrations in their imagined world of Terabithia.
Bridge to Terbithia is directed by Gabor Csupo, a world-famous animation artist who has produced such animated hits as “The Simpsons”, “Rugrats”, and “The Wild Thornberrys”. Walden Media President Cary Granat, who first suggested Csupo, says of him, “I knew that inside Gabor is a kid just dying to go on an adventure, and that was the perfect approach for this story.”
New Zealand’s WETA Digital assembled the animated portions of the film; WETA was made famous by their work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They bring the same anthropomorphic quality to Janice the Giant Troll as they did with Treebeard in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The blend of real and imaginary was artfully done, most notably in the final scene, but also throughout the film.
The story is not what you would expect, and allows the audience to escape into this world of Terabithia in spurts, along with Jess and Leslie. They cannot always be in their world, and so the movie does not focus solely on the part of their life that becomes special to them. Such superior acting by such young stars is rarely seen, but AnnaSophia Robb and Josh Hutcherson have truly portrayed their characters in an emotive performance.
Zooey Deschanel also plays an interesting and important role in the story, and is a wonderful portrayal of Ms. Edmonds, the music teacher. In the course of the movie, the only thing that might have been lagging behind the acting and animation was the driving features of the plot. It is a slower paced film with a somewhat surprising ending. The lead-in to which is hard for some younger children to endure. It is not just a fluff piece with an ordinary happy ending.
How do you make a film in which the biggest hero is imagination itself? And how could the imaginary world of Terabithia be brought to life on the screen so it would also feel as incredibly real and meaningful as it does to Jess and Leslie? This is a point that is seriously explored in the course of this film. Children’s imaginations have the ability to heal many wounds and help them deal with reality. Bridge to Terabithia holds an answer to why so many children need their playmates to help them build a world in which they are invincible.