Movie Review: Bridge To Terabithia

I watched this movie first at the theatre with my girlfriend at the time, and thought that it was a wonderful movie, so I thought I would rewatch it and write a review of it, now that I'm a couple of years older, and more bitter.
Oh, also, be warned, there will be spoilers.

When I first watched the trailers for this movie, I went in expecting some big fantasy epic, as a few of those had been coming out at the time, and are still coming out. What I ended up with, though, was something completely different. Not to say that this was a bad thing, as I did enjoy the movie, but it just wasn't as I expected.
Bridge To Terabithia follows a tale of a Jess, a young boy, who lives with his parents and four sisters. His family isn't very well off, as is shown at the start of the movie when he is duct taping his sneakers together. He is bullied at school, and just seems to not enjoy himself very much, except in drawing and painting. A new girl, Leslie, starts at his school, who he ignores to begin with, but then warms up to her and they become fast friends.
Over the course of the movie, she shows him how to open his mind, so to speak, unleashing his full imagination. They travel over a stream via a rope swing to the magical land of Terabithia, please note, the rope swing is important. Over in Terabithia there is all sorts of magical beings and the such, but they aren't really important, this isn't a movie about the fantastical, it's a movie about friendship.

Ok, at this point, if you haven't seen the movie and just glossed over the part earlier where I said that there would be spoilers, please think carefully before reading any further. This movie is a good movie, and I recommend you go and watch it before having the plot laid out fully for you.

If you've seen this movie, you know what comes next. I'm going to describe how I felt briefly through this movie. First, this movie started to gently reach into my chest, and took a nice gentle hold of my heart, of course, I was thinking 'WTF are you doing?', to which the movie responded with 'It's OK, this is going to be all right, I'm just going to warm your heart nicely, everything will be fine.'. I thought this was alright, so I let it continue, and warm my heart it did. Then, suddenly, without warning, my heart is being violently ripped out of my chest and stabbed repeatedly. They killed off Leslie. THEY KILLED HER!
Here's how it happened, Jess gets a call from one of his teachers, Ms. Edmunds, played by Zooey Deschanel, whom he has a crush on, and don't get me wrong, who wouldn't have a crush on their teacher if she looked like Zooey Deschanel, and she invites him to go to a museum with her and her nephews, so go along he does. What happened to her nephews, noone knows, but they're nowhere to be seen, but that's not important, but it bothered me none the less, anyway, while Jess is at the museum, Leslie heads off to Terabithia, via the rope swing, which breaks and drops her onto a rock to subsequently drown in the river. He doesn't find out about this until he gets back from the museum, and is sent into a pit of despair.
Of course, the point of the movie is to show him moving past the grief, and remembering her in a happier way, and that he does. It ends on a high note of him taking his sister to Terabithia and showing her how to imagine it all.
So, overall, it's a good movie, I think. It really tugs at the heart strings though, and made me shed a tear or two (dozen) when Leslie dies. I think that any movie that evokes that sort of strong emotion is a good movie.
I probably wouldn't recommend this for children, or at least, not young young children, I'd not let anyone under about 10-12 see it. There is minor violence in the movie, but that's not why I'd restrict the watching, but rather because of the death of one of the very major characters. I don't think children would really understand the necessity of it for the learning purpose of the movie.

Hmm, this review has been kind of disjointed and crappy, but I'm kind of tired and feeling sad because I just watched the movie.

In closing. Watch the movie, even if you read through the spoilers here without seeing the movie previously (Yes, I'm talking to YOU!) still go and watch it, it's good.

Thank you all for reading, Hopefully my next post won't be as crappy as this one has been.