The Lovely Bones - Movie Review

By Anne Brodie Dec 11, 2009, 22:52 GMT

Adapted from Alice Sebold\'s novel of the same name. When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these things didn\'t happen. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death, and her own adjustment to ...more

Magic surrealism, lots of computer wallpaper-esque heaven and special effects a great film does not make. 

Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of the award winning novel about a murdered girl watching over her family and her murderer from heaven is killed by its own striving.  The fascinating subject matter which lends itself to our private, perfectly able imagination is spelled out to us as if we’re idiots in Jackson’s estimation of our private imagination.  It looks and feels false, misguided, overloaded, just too much.  And yet, there are genuine scares and tears.

Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg tackle Alice Sdebold’s story in what could have been a solid thriller inching slowly from an ordinary day to a brutally shocking murder of a youngster, to the aftermath and towards the killer’s soul, but good intentions disappear in manipulative and gaudy computer wallpaper environments.  Artificial limbo and heaven seen through the girl’s eyes seem like the stuff of Broadway musicals, perhaps not what was intended, but there it is.  The visual environment seriously distracts from the earthly story, which is riveting enough.  They have more weight then they deserve overshadowing the rich field of human experience around the mysteries of murder, death and human nature.

Ronan does a good job of portraying a little girl in the untenable, sad shock of knowing too much too soon.  Susie Salmon is shy and deep, and filled with the joys of being young and naïve.  She is at that stage where her parents are still cool and she is infatuated with a boy for the first time.  Ronan shows Susie living her life and on that awful day, realising milli-second by milli-second what is happening to her in her neighbour’s underground lair. 

Young New Zealand actress Rose McIvor gives us some of the film’s best moments as Susie’s sister Lindsay.  Lindsay obsesses over her sister’s death and determines to find out who killed her and where her body is.  She breaks into their neighbour’s home looking for clues in an agonising, pulse pounding sequence - heart attack city! 

But Jackson gives us these incredible cinematic moments short shrift, diminishing them inside a dayglo world always just hanging over the action.  A woodland scene, mountain scene, and golden field, whatever Jackson’s idea of heaven is at that specific moment.  It’s true that many are breath-taking and moving; our hearts break for the family and the people Susie meets in the other world.

Susan Sarandon, God bless her, storms on the scene like a battalion of booze soaked reality checks, as Susie’s grandmother, who holds the family together in the wake of the tragedy.  Stanley Tucci as the weird neighbour is so creepy it’s almost unbearable, but Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz as the parents don’t have all that much to do – this is Susie’s story.

A big shout out Jackson for making us understand the events as the sickening, sick horrific things no one should have to know, especially a little girl who has never been kissed.  Next time, a little less paint, please.

35mm fantasy / horror
Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, novel by Alice Sebold’s
Directed by Peter Jackson
Opens: Dec. 11
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language
Runtime: 135 minutes
Country: US / UK / New Zealand
Language: English