It didn't do a lot for me.

It's refreshing to see a kids' film dealing with such mature themes as death in these manners (with imagination, like someone said, a la Pan's Labyrinth), but I think the death here is manipulative. It's sudden, comes too late in the film, and thus feels oddly placed and miscalculated - not emotional, like it should.

Most of the kids' acting is also thoroughly annoying. The two leads are adequate but a little grating.

I actually liked the relatively low amount of fantasy and, especially, its incorporation in the final scene. Liked the ambition. But overall I was unmoved.

C+ or thereabouts.

This coupled with your A- for Drek 3 makes your opinion no longer have any sway.

B+

Really enjoyed it. It got better as it went. Both kids were great, and pretty much every character introduced had their own unique feel to them (Music teacher, their Eng? teacher, and both bullies, as well as the parents and Jess's little sister). And I really enjoyed the ending actually. For some reason though (haven't read the book), it felt to me like the author was stumped on how to actually end the story, so she decided to kill Leslie off. Just my opinion, I'll have to read the book though. And no, I didn't like the ending because of Leslie's death. I liked it because it was something that rarely happens (main character(s)) dying. And the death really made Jess realize just how much he cared for her (and vice-versa when Leslie's dad told him that she loved him). I do wish their troll hunter ended up with Jess though.

And your A- for Pirates 3 does the same for yours.

Let's call it even.

I liked it.

I guess since I read the book as a kid, it just didn't get me emotionally, knowing what would happen. But yeah, it's a well-adapted film with good performances from both leads.

B-

I think it's a strong movie. Didn't know what was going to happen, I thought the first 40-50 minutes were okay, honest but not great, the death is almost like a twist. So any major critisism is that the story's first hour kind of replays a lot of the same beats over and over. Not sure all the plots really added anything to the story.

AnnaSophia Robb was really good, but I was not too sold on Josh Hutcherson. They are kids though, so whatever.

I was also a bit disappointed that Terabithia itself wasn't a bit more lush and more of ... anything.

One thing that bothered me was the GOD AWFUL ADR/dubbing done in this film. It was almost like a Hallmark Channel Movie. I can forgive the shoestring budget CGI for what it is, but I just wish there was a little more passion thrown into the sound and cinematography.

I was half-expecting for Leslie to show up as an figure in Terebithia at the end, and was a bit surprised and both relieved (because it was different) and disappointed (because it would just seem more uplifting) to see that he didn't imagine her there.

It's 10 times the film that Walden wanted Narnia to be.

I thought it was interesting how Jess and Ms. Edmonds' (Zooey) relationship lead to Leslie's death. How could she know something so trivial like his crush on his teacher would affect her life? AND if Jess had let his sister play with the two more often, it could have also saved Leslie, as she would have been with the little sister that day.

I wish going into the film that I did not know the ending. Unfortunately that was ruined when in 5th grade I watched the 1985 version. Still, the death worked on me and I felt Hutcherson pulled off his responses nicely. Having never read the book, I did have a problem with the random call from the teacher (and I really like Zooey in general) asking if Hutcherson wanted to go to the museum. I did not feel that the two characters has a strong enough bond for the teacher to call out of the blue, but that is only a minor flaw.

I wish that Robert Patrick's character would have been fleshed out a but more and I could not really figure out the issues between father and son.

Robb was excellent in her roll and I feel that she is much more subtle actor than her oft compared peer, Dakota Fanning. For the strong performances and a theme never really explored in children's/family movies, I give this film a B+.

OMG

Your movie taste reeks worse than five day old garbage

I'm an atheist and have no problem loving the film...

Yeah, for a Disney family film they have a pretty Universalist take on religion, which I found to be cool.

Still love this after all these months. I'm really happy Robb got a BFCA nom for her work.

just because your life serves no purpose whatsoever, does not give you right to bash a Disney film that OD'd. I will never watch Bridge to Terabithia again, its like Before Sunset, it makes me sad.

B


I've never read the book, so I can't really compare the fiom with it, but the movie by itself is a sweet and charming coming of age tale and a nice story about the power of human imagination. I think my major criticism is the whole fantasy stuff in it....the scenes just didn't blend too well with the "reality"-scenes. When all the overkill of the CG creatures and the fight and all started, it just seemed too weird to me. I'm absolutely sure that it reads much better than it looks on screen, but those scenes when all the creatures actually appeared and the kids fought them just struck me as very awkward. I wish they had left it a bit more "imaginary". Those parts bothered me quite a bit.

Apart from them, it is quite solid. The kids deliver good performances, especially AnnaSophia Robb as Leslie. Sadly, the movie's ending was spoiled to me even before the movie came out, but it took little away from the emotional punch it delivered. Sure, at times the movie is a tad reaching (like the boy being able to build such a bridge on his own and apparently in a rather short time frame) and a tad manipulative, but that didn't bother me much really. As I said, it is sweet tale with its heart in a right place. It couldn't quite get me involved up until the second half, but as it did, I was more and more moved by the story. At first, there were far too many cliché characters for my taste in the film (like the bullying girl who is abused by her father...pleeeaaase). But at the end I forgave the film all that because its message is still genzuine and universal. So my grade is a strong B, bordering on a B+.

so much better than normal Dinsey live-action stuff...I actually teared up at one part. And the actors were really great.

this is hardly a family film, though, it's really more of an adult look at childhood.

B+

What an incredibly genuine movie. Almost everything worked great. The things that didn't still worked well enough to gel with the rest of the movie. It avoided a lot of the traditional cliches of fantasy movies, and instead drops in some cliches of "real" kid's movies. Forgivable. Both of the kids were simply remarkable, with the young lady stealing the whole movie. She gives much more of an inspired performance than at least half of anything else shown last year. Like I said, a few things that didn't quite work dropped this movie down the grading scale, but when the movie's on, its absolute magic. Highly recommended for everyone.

A-

I was a little confused sometimes. Fantastic though.

B