Here's an old-fashioned children's film that should suit the once huge family audience very well. Taken from Katherine Paterson's worldwide success, its keynote is charm rather than sentimentality, along with an imaginative description of childhood that never allows the many special effects to swamp the character drawing.

Our hero is Jess (the excellent Josh Hutcherson), an outsider at school whose one friend, Leslie (AnnaSophia Robb), creates for him the secret kingdom of Terabithia, only accessible by swinging on an old rope over a stream near their homes.

There they fight the Dark Master and his creatures, which include squirrels in battle armour and trees that walk, and plot against the bullies in the only school of their rural country town.

In the novel, Leslie makes reference to the fictional world of Narnia and the film has about it some of the fantasy of the CS Lewis's Chronicles - thankfully, with that book's semi-religious connotations left out.

It merely suggests that friendship can surmount many of the problems of childhood and that fantasy can sometimes put the real world into perspective.

Among the best scenes are those which show how beastly kids can be to each other when the mood takes them, and how slow adults often are to recognise that fact.