The Lovely Bones --- Movie Review!
The Lovely Bones didn’t make as much money as I thought it would this weekend, but perhaps some of that is because Avatar is still doing so well and word of mouth hasn’t been great on the film itself. The Lovely Bones has a built in audience, owing to the fact that it is based on a popular novel by Alice Sebold. It’s the story of a 14 year-old girl, Susie Salmon, who is brutally raped and murdered by a neighbor. She watches her family from the heavenly “Inbetween” as they struggle with their loss and try to solve her murder. I haven’t read this book, but people keep telling me that it’s really good.
Peter Jackson is at the helm, which would normally be a good thing, especially after a strong literary adaptation like Lord of the Rings (LOTR), or an older movie of his with a similar tone, called Heavenly Creatures. However, it seems that Mr. Jackson has lost sight of these character-driven stories after working on such behemoths as LOTR and King Kong. This movie falls flat on his face, and all signs point to Jackson and a bad script that he and writing partner Fran Walsh came up with. As I always say, you can’t cover up a bad script with CGI and special effects.
Though the movie follows the book pretty closely (so I’ve been told), it really expands on this idea of heaven and “The Inbetween.” This gives Jackson license to use a bunch of green screen and make what is supposed to be a magical world --- though some of the visuals are cool, it comes off looking like the cheesy world from What Dreams May Come (if you remember that crapfest). Worse than this though, is the fact that they have expanded the role of the Inbetween in the plot so much that they had to cut out other significant details from the book. This has the effect of making the story choppy, especially in transitioning between suspenseful scenes and cheesy sentimental scenes. As well, Roger Ebert noted this first, but this movie seems to leave you with the thought that it’s totally awesome to die, because you truly do go to a better place where you’re surrounded by what Ebert hilariously termed, a “happy gathering of Facebook friends.” (In my perfect Inbetween, this movie wouldn’t exist!)
The movie is also PG-13, which is shouldn’t be. This is a violent and tough subject, and though I don’t think the movie needed over the top violence to make its point, it shied so far away from any notions of on screen violence that it became pretty impotent. I want to feel uncomfortable in a movie like this --- it was almost like this movie was shooting for ‘uplifting.’
To take this a step further, notice how the marketing has changed for this movie? Before Christmas, all the ads were touting it as studio prestige material, vying for Oscar nominations. Now, however, after some word of mouth has gotten out, the marketing has been redone to be more geared towards 14 year-old girls --- which is actually a good place to put this movie. Its whitewashed nature and overly melodramatic handling has a very strong “Twilight” vibe to it.
To say something positive though, the acting was pretty top notch, especially veteran character actor Stanley Tucci. His part is weak and underwritten here, but he still manages to bring an excellent characterization. Saoirse Ronan was also good as Susie, following her excellent turn in Atonement a year or so back. Susan Sarandon is okay as comic relief, though some might argue that this character is superfluous.
Anyway, 2 Dorks out of 5 on the Geek-o-Meter. I don’t think fans of the book will really take to this adaptation --- it’s more aimed at tween girls.
