'Bridge to Terabithia'

"Just close your eyes and keep your mind wide open."

It's the heroine's credo in "Bridge to Terabithia" (), a smart and bittersweet tale about growing up and about that one friend who "gets" you, who helps you look at the world in a different way.

But it's also good advice to a moviegoer who sees the film of that 1977 classic novel for tweens. The movie rough-edges some characters, overemphasizes the fantastical and loses some of its wonderful themes in the process -- but it rings true. And that novel with heart, about a rural fifth-grader who loves to draw, and the imaginative, sophisticated city girl who moves across the road, becomes a fanciful, emotional and entertaining movie, the latest coup from Walden Media, the studio that brought us "Charlotte's Web."

Josh Hutcherson ("RV," "Zathura") is Jess, the farm kid who really wants to draw, something he hides from his disapproving father. Along comes the tomboyishly cute Leslie (Annasophia Robb, "Because of Winn-Dixie"), and they soon become friends. Together they dream up Terabithia, an island in the middle of a creek that they imagine as magical, with tree trolls, monstrous squirrels and hideous crows.

It's real-life struggles that disappear in Terabithia.

The film is being sold by Disney as another "Narnia"-style fantasy, when really, the fantasy is more a symbolic subtext here. This is about guilt, grief and children's cruel and funny ways.

Walden Media's goal -- to make transitional movies for young filmgoers aging out of animation and kiddie comedies -- is saving movie-going for another generation.

Rated PG for thematic elements including bullying, some peril and mild language.

-- Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel

'Daddy's Little Girls'

Tyler Perry creates his own movie universe. With films such as "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" and "Daddy's Little Girls," his earnest parables wed uplift-of-the-downtrodden narratives with Harlequin Romance storytelling.

If Perry were working in Germany or Spain and his pictures arrived here subtitled, he would be a critical darling. Instead, he works in Atlanta and is an audience darling, maker of reliable crowd-pleasers in which virtue is rewarded and really good-looking people kiss.

In "Daddy's Little Girls" (), the good-lookers are Monty (Idris Elba), a humble, cash-strapped mechanic and single father of three, and Julia (Gabrielle Union), a snooty attorney.

To make extra cash, Monty moonlights as a limo driver, where he meets Julia. As is the ironclad rule in movie romances, they can't abide each other. But when he gets involved in a custody battle, Julia gets involved.

Is the story implausible? Yes. Predictable? Yes. Entertaining? You bet.

Rated PG-13 for drug and sexual content, violence, profanity.

-- Carrie Rickey, The Philadelphia Inquirer