I must say I did not see the second half of the film coming at all, it blew my emotional feelings in.

In class, Jess is also bullied by his classmates Scott Hoager and Gary Fulcher and meets a new student named Leslie Burke. Robb also conversed with producer Lauren Levine before casting even began, and "their conversation convinced her that, without a doubt, AnnaSophia was meant for this role". A preteen's life turns upside down when he befriends the new girl in school and they imagine a whole new fantasy world to escape reality. The story was based on his real-life best friend, Lisa Hill, who was struck by lightning and killed when they were both eight years old.

The film is certainly not that long, but then again, the narrative concept is hardly meat enough to sustain a 95-minute runtime, which is achieved largely through unfocused meanderings in material and an excess filler, neither of which blend together as comfortably as they should. Reception [ edit ] Critical reception [ edit ] AnnaSophia Robb's portrayal of Leslie Burke was highly praised; one critic enjoyed her "engaging" performance", and thought "only the story's vibrant young heroine [. As I just finished saying, there's potential to this story concept, but it's limited, offering a paper-thin conflict, and even little plays on the fantasy elements, until what you end up with is a fantasy flick and character drama that is lacking in flare, whose limitations could be easier to ignore if the execution wasn't so draggy.

At no point do I understand what the critics are saying, but the film starts out endearingly, only to do hardly anything at all to obtain kick, just wander along a trite, minimalist path with no real dynamicity, and a whole lot of shameless manipulations that it does not have the inspiration to compensate for, resulting in a fantasy drama that has its fair share of fair moments, but ultimately fizzles out. Shoot, maybe I'm just worried because you know that a coming-of-age drama with prominent fantasy elements is just begging to be cheesed up by the usual subtlety issues of Neal Morse-I mean, Disney (I've got Transatlantic stuck in my head, so after this review, I might need to go take, oh, say, an hour or so to listen to one of their songs).The film was directed by Nickelodeon's Rugrats co-creator and former Hanna-Barbera animator Gábor Csupó, who was first recommended for the job by Walden Media President Cary Granat.

With that in mind, they "tried to do the absolute minimum, which would be required to put it into a movie version". The film was finished by November 2006, because the crew "had to rush" to meet the February 16 deadline.Zigman, who also scored Flicka simultaneously with Bridge to Terabithia compared both the film's having Celtic influence a bit, but added the score of the latter as more modern and orchestral compared to the former. The filmmakers cast Robert Patrick as Jess's hardworking and strict father based on his previous roles in the films Walk the Line, Flags of Our Fathers, and the television series The Unit.