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Bridge to Terabithia

Though this movie has many elements that by themselves could be part of an excellent story (e.g., great visual effects, acting, costuming, etc.), I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth. I went to the theater expecting a cool fun fantasy adventure film, but what I saw was a movie with no real point that didn't go anywhere. I waited and waited to see what the movie ultimately wanted to say, but nothing ever came - except maybe, "Life is crap, good people die for no reason and there's nothing you can do about it." The story line was simple enough - boy meets girl, boy plays makebelieve with girl, girl dies in a pointless tragic accident that stops the progression of the story in its tracks, nothing else happens from there to the ending credits.

I have some background in amateur theater and have a great deal of admiration and respect for this art-form, so I can't resist warning my fellow movie-goers away from a movie that no one will want to see twice. If, in the middle of the movie, one of the actors had addressed the audience and said, "Well, folks, we thought about making the rest of this movie, but we decided that we were too lazy to bother with it, so you might as well go home now..." I think it would have been an improvement. After they made the audience fall in love with the two main characters and killed one of them off, I kept waiting for them to use the incident to move the story in a new direction and make a statement of some kind, but they never did.

The first half of the movie was quite enjoyable and appeared to be a set up for something akin to a "Narnia" type adventure, but it turned out to be more like reading a book only to get to the exciting part and discover that the rest of the pages have been torn out.

For those sadistic people who enjoy a side of tragedy with their fairy tales, let me say that you probably won't enjoy this movie either, simply because it was poorly done. Tragedy is an unfortunate part of real life, and therefore, not entirely out of place in entertainment, however, it must be done right. Like most other people, I got misty-eyed while watching "Titanic," "Patch Adams," and the Paul McKusker play "Catacombs" (which I acted in), but even though people die in those stories, and the audience gets out their pocket packs of Kleenex tissues, everyone still feels good at the end of the story because the deaths of their favorite characters actually meant something and the story works out in a feel-good way.

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