Movie offers audience an escape

The director keeps the film emotionally true to the book.
By ROGER MOORE
ORLANDO SENTINEL
"Just close your eyes and keep your mind wide open."
It's the heroine's credo in "Bridge to Terabithia," a smart and bittersweet tale of growing up and that one friend who "gets" you, who helps you look at the world in a different way.
But it's also good advice to a moviegoer who sees the film of that 1977 classic novel for tweens. The movie isn't a perfect realization of Katherine Paterson's book. It rubs the rough edges off some characters, overemphasizes the fantastical and loses some of its wonderful themes in the process.
But it rings true. And that novel with heart, about a rural fifth-grader who loves to draw, and the imaginative, sophisticated city girl who moves across the road, becomes a fanciful, emotional and entertaining movie, the latest coup from the studio that brought us "Charlotte's Web" and "Holes" -- Walden Media.
Josh Hutcherson, of "RV" and "Zathura," is Jess, the farm-kid with a cow to milk, chickens to feed and vegetables to tend. What he really wants to do is draw, something he has to hide from his disapproving father (Robert Patrick, professional disapprover).
Jess longs to make his presence felt, as the fastest kid in school, he hopes. Then, the tomboyishly cute Leslie (AnnaSophia Robb of "Because of Winn-Dixie") shows up, and shows him up on the track.
Their own place
But she's irrepressible, and they soon become friends, friends who need a place they can call their own. It's an island in the middle of a creek, a place you can only reach with a rope swing. Leslie names it Terabithia, and she and Jess decide it is a magical place, and imagine battles against its villains (tree trolls, monstrous squirrels, hideous crows) when they're not in school together.
Life, the family trying to make ends meet, the terrors kids sometimes feel over religion at that age, and that first taste of heartbreaking loss and grief all disappear in Terabithia. Middle school is a war zone. There are bullies to be confronted, or tricked, and teachers to be either feared or swoon over.
Zooey Deschanel, in one adorable bit of casting, is the hippie-ish music teacher Jess has given his 11-year-old-heart to. She's not making the kids learn "Kum Ba Ya." She's singing them Shawn Colvin songs, and War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?"
"Terabithia" is being sold by Disney as another "Narnia"-style fantasy, when really, the fantasy is more a symbolic subtext here. This is about guilt, how you can misjudge people, grief and children's cruel and funny ways.
"You're lucky to have a sister," Leslie tells Jess, whose adoring little sis, Maybelle (Bailee Madison), is always tagging along.
"Yeah? I got four of 'em, and I'd trade 'em all for a good dog," Jess fires back.
Staying true
The director here, Gabor Csupo, has worked mostly in animation, but he keeps this picture emotionally true to the novel even as he's giving us a healthy taste of special-effects trolls. Hutcherson, stripped of the Southern-accent the character has in the book, doesn't make the strongest impression. But Robb, so wan and disappointing when she had to carry "Because of Winn-Dixie," is maturing into a fiesty, Keira Knightley-cute spitfire, at least as she's showcased here.
Walden Media's goal -- to make transitional movies for young filmgoers aging out of animation and kiddie comedies -- is saving moviegoing for another generation. They're not going to produce a "Charlotte's Web" or a "Holes" every time out. But "Terabithia" suggests that after misfires from "Hoot" to "How to Eat Fried Worms," they may have found their voice. That's good news for the movies, and the kids who see them.