Bridge to Terabithia
The Hills Have Eyes 2
Bridge to Terabithia
The trailer for "Bridge to Terabithia" led me to believe it would be a mind-numbing children's fantasy movie along the same lines as "The Potter, the Eragon and the Wardrobe," or whatever that dreadful film was called. Much to my surprise, "Bridge to Terabithia" is nothing like that at all. It's a thoughtful, moving, good-natured and at times devastatingly sad little movie. The story focuses on prepubescent Jesse (superbly played by Josh Hutcherson) whose unhappy life is divided equally between home and school. At home Jesse's large family is struggling to make ends meet while his decent but severe father disapproves of his fondness for endlessly drawing pictures. At school life is little better as he routinely gets bullied by his classmates. With the start of the new school year Jesse gradually befriends new student Leslie (Anna Sophia Robb), an angelic-faced and kind-hearted girl who also happens to be his new neighbor. Together they create a place of retreat away from their troubles in a woodland near where they live which Leslie names Terabithia. It's a place where they can indulge their fondness for candy as well as their imaginations in what is their very own little kingdom. What really makes "Bridge to Terabithia" far better than most children's movies is its understanding of childhood as a joyful, bewildering and sometimes terrifying experience. The film's strength isn't in its occasional excursions into fantasy but in the authentic mini-dramas that the children go through every day, from riding the bus to school to doing their chores to coping with the school bullies. There's even a surprisingly touching and subtly handled subplot in which Jesse is rather smitten with his music teacher, the beautiful Ms. Edmonds (Zooey Deschanel). The scenes between Jesse and his father (played by the ever-dependable Robert Patrick) are also extremely astute. Without once resorting to melodrama they manage to convey so much of the tense love that exists between father and son. Towards the end of the film there is a heartbreakingly sad and unexpected development which completely took me aback. I don't want to give anything away but it's an extremely bold twist which is all too rare in most mainstream kids' movies, whose sole intention is to dazzle you with special effects until you're so brain-dead you mistake it for happiness. "Bridge to Terabithia" is a rare treat for daring to offer children a thought-provoking look at life while also revelling in the joys of childhood.
1/2 ( Tim Ochser )
The Hills Have Eyes 2
Last year's "The Hills Have Eyes" was a remake of Wes Craven's 70s-era slasher film in which a family stranded in a desert is picked off by a bunch of bloodthirsty mutants. That remake, which was well-received by audiences and many critics, has spawned a sequel which is now already in theaters. In "The Hills Have Eyes 2" a battalion of national guard reservists are assigned to join a crew of scientists doing top-secret work somewhere in the desert. Upon their arrival, they find the location abandoned and start searching for signs of life. One by one the soldiers begin getting picked off by savage and deformed creatures living inside the hills' caves and mineshafts. "The Hills Have Eyes 2" is a sleep-inducing experience which feels like a group of film students were given one weekend to conceive and shoot something which might possibly scare five-year-olds. It looks cheap, primitive and feels way out of date. The bad guys look like they are wearing discount dime-store Halloween costumes. (I think that the masks in my elementary school haunted house were scarier.) And the good guys are the dumbest soldiers I may have seen on film. Apparently, they did not pay much attention in basic training as they rarely stick together and demostrate an uncanny ability for making fatal decisions. There's plenty of schlocky gore and violence and a rape scene that's entirely distasteful and unnecessary. The extent of the psychological suspense involves waiting for the next dull-witted soldier to get sucked to his horrid death through a hole in the hill. The whole film is forgettable save for one unsavory scene in which a soldier goes to relieve himself in the outhouse and up through the hole comes an uninvited guest covered in goo. But it's not one of the mutants. Rather it's one of the missing scientists whose grossly maimed body has been left to fester in the human muck. The soldiers try to save him by wiping the fetid excrement off his body. Mmmm. But he perishes. That corpse is perhaps the most fitting metaphor I can think of for this film. It really stinks.
( Sherwin Das )
