Ho John Lee’s Weblog

My 10-year-old daughter and I went to see The Bridge to Terabithia yesterday. She read the book last year and wanted to see the movie, which has been advertised regularly over the past few months.

For movies that are based on a book, my general rule for my daughter is that you should try to read the book before you see the movie. In this case, I didn’t follow my own advice. Although this book is well known in children’s literature (winner of the 1978 Newberry Award), I never got around to reading it, and thus was utterly blindsided by the movie.

The movie advertisements make it look like mostly a fantasy and adventure story, kind of like Chronicles of Narnia or perhaps Neverending Story. It’s not. It’s mostly about friendship and pointless tragedy in middle school. I found it enormously disturbing. It pushed a lot of my emotional buttons, both as a parent today, and in recollection of being an odd kid out in a rural school system in the past.

I don’t think I was the only one who got caught off guard at the movie theater, either. I think this is actually a better-than-average family/kids story (for perhaps 4th-5th grade and up), it just isn’t what they marketed, and parents should be prepared for a conversation about death, which might not work for everyone.

When I was in high school, I used to enjoy (emotionally authentic, depressing) movies like this more. Now, I’d rather just see stylized fantasy or heroic death (Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings) or entertaining family cartoons (Cars, The Incredibles). There’s enough authentic tragedy in the world, I don’t need more of it from the movies, and I don’t find it enlightening or uplifting.

In reading the Wikipedia entry on the movie, I see that the issue with the marketing has come up before:

The filmmakers have disavowed the advertisement campaign for the movie saying that the advertising is deliberately misleading; making the movie seem like it was about or occurring in a fantasy world like that of Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia[3]. David L. Paterson in the SCI FI Wire article was surprised by the trailer but understood the marketing reasoning behind it saying:

“Although there is a generation that is very familiar with book, if you are over 40, then you probably haven’t, and we need to reach them. … Everyone who read the book and sees the trailer says, ‘What is this? This is nothing like the book. What are you doing, Dave?’ And I say, ‘You know what you’re seeing is 15 seconds of a 90-minute film. Give me a little leeway and respect. Go see it, and then tell me what you think.’”

I’m generally positive on the movie, but I wish I’d read the book first.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Books, Movies, Music, Front Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.