The Lovely Bones

I blame Peter Jackson shedding all that weight for making me rather iffy on his latest effort, The Lovely Bones. I enjoyed him a little more when he was the energetic, portly man bounding around the set of the Lord of the Rings films. Of course this is completely irrational, but I said it and I’m sticking to it. The Lovely Bones is just good enough rather than great because PJ is no longer a hairy fat hobbit. Now he’s just hairy. I have to warn you that this review is going to be all over the place and probably leave you wondering just why in the hell I’m recommending it. Hopefully you’ll come away with some sense of why I think you should still see it despite it being rather clunky.

Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is a typically awkward 14 year old girl. She wants to be a photographer, she loves her siblings Lindsey and Buckley, she’s never kissed a boy and she wants to shed any sense of the ordinary that might be lurking about inside of her. After receiving a camera for her birthday, she proceeds to shoot random pictures until using up every last roll of film her parents, Jack and Abigail, had given her. Her parents promise that they will develop one roll of film per month, which obviously leaves her quite disappointed. After school one day, she’s approached by Ray, the boy she has a massive crush on. Ray kind of looks a little old for Susie if you ask me, because Saorise Ronan barely even looks 14. She looks more like she’s 11. Anyways, to her complete shock and surprise Ray wants to meet Susie Saturday at the mall in the gazebo, but tragically, this will never happen.

I’m not giving away anything by telling you Susie is murdered by the Salmon’s neighbor, George Harvey, who is played brilliantly by Stanley Tucci. On her way home from school, she’s lured by Harvey into a sort of cornfield mini-dungeon that he has built right into the ground for the sole purpose of trapping and killing her. The scene with the two of them is extremely intense, and really gives you this overwhelming sense of unease, despite already knowing that she’s not going to make it out alive. When she finally decides that it’s best that she gets the hell out of there, she makes a dash for the hatch, kicks Harvey in the grill and at first she thinks she’s home free. Susie sprints home only to slowly realize, she’s not really on Earth anymore, but rather in the ‘in-between’.

That’s about all I can give you without getting really spoilery, something the trailer could’ve taken a hint from. The trailer just assumes we’ve all read the book by Alice Sebold and gives a bit too much of the premise away in my opinion. I guess that’s ok though really because the movie isn’t so much about the murder mystery but rather the effect it has on her family. The real meat to the story is in her inability and her family’s inability to just let go. It’s still got a dash of whodunit, but strictly from Susie’s family’s perspective since we all know who did what already.

My main issue that keeps this from being really great lie within just a couple of things. The first being the art direction and Jackson’s over indulgence as a film director. Yes I know that to a lot of you out there, Peter Jackson can do no wrong. But in Lovely Bones, he’s really just taking a somewhat flimsy adaptation of a book and using it as an excuse to show us one elaborate set piece after another. Don’t get me wrong, there is much to like here and at times it looks fantastic but most of the time it just comes across as very uninspired; very ‘been there, done that’ type of art direction. For a good number of scenes that are shot in the ‘in-between,’ I felt like I was watching a rehashed version of the Robin Williams flick, ‘What Dreams May Come.’ Overly stylish and stylish just to be, well, stylish. You Avatar haters must be screaming at your computer screen right now. How could I possibly fault Jackson for going overboard on style while using a thin plot and still unabashedly love Avatar? Well, as I pointed out earlier, the sets and design just seem recycled from other movies. I fully expect a director like Peter Jackson to push the envelope when it comes to this stuff and unfortunately, it comes across as a bit lazy in parts.

The other thing that I know is going to turn a lot of people off, is the ending and here I cannot avoid spoilers so read at your own risk:

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So why in the hell am I still recommending this? It’s still pretty slick to look at here and features a couple really great performances from Stanley Tucci, Saoirse Ronan, and Susan Sarandon. Tucci is just all kinds of unsettling as the pedophile serial killer who is so methodical and so calculating it’s actually fun to watch him. Ronan also turns in a great performance as Susie and I look forward to seeing her in other things in the future; very talented young actor. Susan Sarandon is an adorable alcoholic grandma,and even though it’s not anything groundbreaking she’s doing here, I just really had a good time watching the scenes she was in.

Mark Wahlberg is serviceable as the grieving father, although not quite what I would’ve wanted out of the role. I don’t think he’s able to really lend enough weight to the role and although you can tell he’s going all out, he just narrowly gets the character. Rachel Weisz however is completely uninspired and while part of it is the disconnect her character is dealing with, most of it is just her being about as boring of an actor as can be.

There is a great movie in here, it’s just buried underneath the surface and you have to work a little harder to get something out of it for yourself. I recommend the movie on the basis that it features some good performances and although I’ve harped on it quite a bit, there are some interesting and cool artistic choices Jackson made. I won’t give those away, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.

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