Ideal family viewing

Sympathetic and unpatronising insight into the trials of being a kid

Based on the beloved children's book, Bridge to Terabithia takes viewers on a journey into not just the vividly imagined world of its title but a deeper metaphysical realm.

This tender, beautifully realised coming-of-age story fulfills all the requirements for ideal family viewing, offering young people sympathetic, unpatronising insight into the trials of being a kid, while reminding adults that certain life passages - the flickering recognition of first love, the devastation of first loss - never lose their emotional imprint.

Fifth-grader Jess Aarons (Josh Hutcherson), who lives with his family on a struggling farm, wants nothing more than to prove all the bullies and jocks wrong and win the semester's first foot race.

When eccentric new girl Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb) shows up in English class, Jess is mildly intrigued; wearing goofy sneakers and socks on her arms, she drags around a backpack that looks like it once belonged to Jack Sparrow.

Jess is a young man besieged by females (four sisters), forced to suffer such indignities as wearing hand-me-down pink-striped sneakers to school. So when the spirited Leslie beats Jess in that first race, the female pincer movement to ruin his life seems pretty much complete.

Worse, Leslie moves into the house next to Jess' farm, and worse still, considering the Mercedes parked outside, her secondhand-Rose fashion sense belies the kind of offhand wealth that stands like a boho chic rebuke to the Aaronses' own straitened circumstances.

Terabithia sets up all these dynamics with swiftness and clarity, with even more subtleties on the sidelines, including Jess' talent for drawing and his crush on the school's hipster music teacher, Ms. Edmonds (Zooey Deschanel), who, as the adult version of Leslie, suggests that weird chicks can grow up to be pretty cool women.

Jess and Leslie eventually become friends, jumping off the bus after school to explore the woods near their houses.
Leslie, as gifted a storyteller as Jess is an illustrator, names the forest Terabithia, which becomes their private kingdom and fortress against the predations of real life.

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  MPAA rating: PG for thematic elements including bullying, some peril and mild profanity.
• Runing time: 95 minutes