Bridge to Terabithia - A Movie with a Lot to Teach Us

This movie is about two teenagers who both have very vivid imaginations. Jess, expresses his in his artistic world of fantasy characters and Leslie, and expresses hers, in the form of words, both verbal and written. These two meet when she moves next door to his family farm at the beginning of a new school year. Her parents are fiction writers and are more caught up in their writing than with her.

His parents, especially his father, show more positive attention to his four sisters, especially the youngest, Maybelle. He lives on a farm and there is obviously financial difficulty. You learn this when in the very first scene his mother throws out his old shoes and he has to wear one of his older sister's pink tennis shoes. This is especially bad, since later that day he has a race and doesn't want to get laughed at by all the guys. It is when she not only joins, but wins, this all guy race that they meet.

Although the acting seemed good enough and the characters believable to me, the first 10 to 15 minutes were very hard to figure out and gave no indication of what the main plot was going to be about. It seemed nothing like the advertising I had seen on TV. This was the worst part of this movie. As the movie progressed I began to understand it more and more and I even came to enjoy it and learn from it.

It began to come clear when Leslie began to read an assigned report in her English class. She was very vividly describing a scuba diving situation. As she read it the camera zooms in on Jess who is picturing it as vividly as she wrote it. It is at this point that one finally gets the connection between the two characters. This mysterious connection is the main point of the movie.

After school that same day they do some exploring on some land across a creek that neighbors Jess's family farm. Leslie has an amazing ability to speak fantasy and actually believe them into existence. After a short explanation to Jess, together they create a fantasy kingdom from an old tree house, an abandoned pick up truck, and some noisy squirrels.

This kingdom serves as an escape from, and a way to solve problems both at home and at school. For example, finding the weak point in an imaginary giant gives them the idea to find the weak point in a bullying eighth grader. Eventually the problem is solved and a friend is made by the end of the movie.

While the movie is not one of the greatest quality movies that I have ever seen, I did learn something from the movie, something that every child knows, and somehow along the way of growing up we forget. We, or at least I, forget that we can actually use our imagination and creativity, to teach us about life and how to deal with difficult situations in our life. All in all I'd say that this move is one to see and to learn from.