The children's story by Katherine Paterson brings together two junior-high pariahs, a picked-on "artistic" farmboy, solitary brother of four sisters, and a new girl next door, imaginative daughter of two novelists, and sends them off into a woodsy fantasyland of their own making, across the creek on a rope swing. Happily -- just as a change from the likes of Pan's Labyrinth and The Chronicles of Narnia -- it's always clear that the fantasyland is only a fantasy, but that won't protect it from unsightly computer-generated giant trolls, jumbo flying squirrels, armored dragonflies, etc. And even though these are pretty well contained -- in time as well as space -- the sandpapery surface of the image is a constant irritant. (Director Gabor Csupo, an animation man whose credits run from early Simpsons to feature-length Rugrats, is making his live-action debut.) All of this is almost worth putting up with for the brave bit of struggle, late in the day, with issues of male infidelity (sure, the boy knows who his best friend is, but he nonetheless cannot harness a crush on his comely music teacher, Zooey Deschanel), guilt, loss, remorse. The struggle doesn't last long, but it's painful. Josh Hutcherson, AnnaSophia Robb, Robert Patrick. (2007) — Duncan Shepherd