Crying my Way Through Terabithia

First of all, if you have yet to see this movie and intend to, especially if you're not familiar with the ending of this story, and if you hate a spoiler, stop right friggin now cause I'm gonna give away the ending. Don't say you weren't warned.

We took my 9 year old daughter to see The Bridge to Terabithia tonight. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it because there comes a time when you'd really like to get out of the house, buy some greasy popcorn and see a movie with something higher than a PG-13 rating, a few F-bombs and possibly a little skin. I'd seen the previews and figured I was headed into another cute little fantasy movie. I was wrong.

As the movie went on, I leaned to my daughter and said "OK. I'm confused." I figured it was my turn and just as I would have done to her had our roles been reversed into the usual place, she whispered back "Just watch the movie." Where were the mythical creatures? Where were the dragons and fairies? How effing long IS this movie? But as it went on, I found myself becoming more and more immersed in the lives and struggles of these children and came to realize that Terabithia was truly their place, the place that came to life because of the fertility of their imaginations and understood the strength that their friendship and the world they created together changed their lives.

Then came the dreaded ending and we found that Leslie had died and my little one fell apart, I fell apart, and in a theatre that was unusually full of teenage girls and young adults for a movie that had been showing for a while, the resounding snorting of snotty noses and rustling napkins doing double duty as Kleenex filled the space. Everybody was losing it, openly crying. Then we'd laugh and cry at the same time. Then we'd just flat out cry some more.

The whole movie was just wonderful, even if it did completely fuck up my makeup.

On the way out, under the harsh glare of the lights, we ran into people we knew who looked at us, smiled and said "You guys look like hell." And we did.

What I wasn't expecting was my daughter's eventual reaction to the bright idea of killing off Leslie. We got home and while I was upstairs getting into my jammies, my husband came into the bedroom and said "do you have any idea what your daughter is doing?" (He said "my" daughter, meaning not HIS daughter, so I knew it had to be good.) I said "Uh oh." He said "Go see for yourself."

I trotted down the stairs and found her in the big chair, with both the Terabithia book AND the phone book on her lap, cordless phone in hand. She looked up and said "I'm gonna call the people who made this movie and open up a can of whoop-butt about killing Leslie." I said "Hon, those people don't live around here and they're not in that phone book." She replied with "Fine. Give me a BIG phone book and I'll find them that way." Thank God she doesn't yet quite know how to use Google or there would be about 50 people with the last name of Patterson seriously pissed off by now.

The Bridge to Terabithia might be Disney and it might be marketed for kids, but it's a movie for all ages to enjoy and one guaranteed to test your inner strength and your waterproof mascara.

Go.