The Lovely Bones Review

"The story of a life and everything that came after..." - tagline

So Peter Jackson decides to followup his box office monsters like The Lord of the Rings, King Kong and his production of District 9 with The Lovely Bones. Let's find out if it was the right move.

Now several negative reviews and a lack of interest in the story itself almost swayed me from not seeing this movie. But I figured if I was going to be a legitimate critic I would have to watch some pretty bad movies as well. And also from the trailer, I thought this movie might actually be pretty enjoyable. Now I am back after watching The Lovely Bones and here is my review.

If you didn't know, The Lovely Bones is the Peter Jackson film adaptation of Alice Sebold's best selling novel of the same name. It is about your average ordinary girl Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) who is raped and murdered by a local man named George Harvey (Stanley Tucci). After that the story takes place in two different worlds: our world where Susie's family (Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Rose McIver) tries to find out who killed her and a sort of little girl fantasy version of purgatory (or a private little heaven) where Susie watches and waits.

Now this movie I think has considerable hype because a lot of people read the book, and for Peter Jackson fans you get some of his simplistic fantasy movies he made before he started frolicking with Frodo. Yeah, kinda funny how the movie you make after the one about Michael J. Fox hanging with ghosts, is an adaptation of the one of the biggest fantasy stories ever. But that's Hollywood I guess. Fans of the book and probably fans of Jackson may not be disappointed.

I will get the pros and cons out of the way, with pros coming first. The acting in this movie is to be praised. Saoirse Ronan is a talented young actress. She pulls off her character splendidly and goes through a wide range of emotions. Her problem, like many young stars, is her character but I'll go into that later. Mark Wahlberg, who has been playing nice guys lately, is spot on here. Rachel Weisz is good for the most part, she isn't there as much as Wahlberg, but it's nice just to see her in a movie again. The same can be said of the always great Susan Sarandon. Michael Imperioli is a right choice to play the cop. But the big star here is Stanley Tucci who is scary as hell. I was almost surprised it was him when I saw advertisements for this movie. He goes DeNiro for this movie, transforming into the character physically. This is award worthy stuff right here. Also there is some CGI and cinematography in this movie that is just breathtaking and really cool, though this can be expected of Peter Jackson. There are also just some scenes and moments of beauty and heart that I can't go into without giving things away. I'll tell you my favorite little moment is one where Susie reaches out to her father from the afterlife by bringing a dead rose to life in his hands. It's just...lovely.

Now for the bad. I am just really annoyed with modern narration in movies. Narration takes a lot the subtlety out of some movies. Action more often than not speaks louder than words. And yes I said that some of the CGI is good, but at other times the little almost-heaven comes off as being pretty cartoonish and below Jackson's caliber. Also the logic behind the actions characters in this movie take are sometimes just strange. Like the all too conveniant romance between Susie and Ray, a boy from her school. Immediately after Susie tells us, through narration of course, of her Bella Swan like fascination and descriptions of him, Ray coincidentally reveals to her his love for her, asks her out on a date and almost kisses her. This is also coincidentally just right before she is killed. Susie Salmon herself was kind of a frustrating character. Her narration, which was tiresome, made her sound eloquent but hollow, but when in the real world she came off as being kind of a high maintenanced, preppy brat. And also a scene where the Salmon family is confronted by the cop played by Imperioli after attacking the killer, whom they now suspect. Imperioli suggests to them that they need proper evidence. Oh but that doesn't cut it with the Salmons. Bah, evidence! What is this the twentieth century or something? Susan Sarandon was fun when she was in the movie as the outrageous drunken grandmother, but it falls kind of flat when it turns out that is all she is there for: to be outrageous and drunk.

I would also have to agree somewhat with Roger Ebert when in his review he stated that the deaths of George Harvey's victims seemed like a good thing to them. They did all seem to be very happy after he raped, murdered, and (for Susie) dismembered them and sent them to what is basically the continent next to Neverland. I know most religious oriented movies make it kind of a point to view death as a good thing inevitably as it means you are going to a better place, but it still bugs me. Oh and to my surprise, Alice Sebold is not religious.

So yeah, The Lovely Bones is not a bad movie at all. It just wasn't great, but that's okay. There have been plenty of not that great movies out there that I have seen more than twice before. Did it beat Book of Eli, the other religious oriented movie of the year's beginning? Not for me. It was a film that had its moments and I liked it. It has good performances, images, and its story didn't disappoint me.

This has been a satisfied movie review from Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading.