Not as Lovely as Expected

The Lovely Bones

Directed By: Peter Jackson

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, & Saoirse Ronan

The problem with The Lovely Bones is not that it is necessarily a bad movie, but that it is not as good as it should be. It has a top-notch cast, a colorful assembly of Academy Award nominees and winners. It has Peter Jackson as a director...yes, the same Jackson who simultaneously gave both fanboys and hardened critics a wet dream with his brilliantly-crafted Lord of the Rings trilogy. It also has a dark, but much-beloved book by Alice Sebold as its basis. The Oscar buzz for this movie was extremely high...until, you know, people actually saw it. Then, it was only Stanley Tucci who came off with any degree of attention; he would later receive some of the best reviews of his career and then get a much-deserved Oscar nomination. The movie, itself, however, did not receive such acclaim. Having now seen it, I can certainly understand why. It is riddled with problems, problems that threaten to completely sink it in the very first act and then are rectified, at least in part, by the end. The biggest problem of all: Peter Jackson's blatant self-indulgence. He gets so carried away with the visual effects, some of them rather hokey, that the movie is bogged down by its own extravagance. What should have been a 90-minute drama about a grieving family turns into a 2-hour...well, I don't really know what it is. It sure is pretty to look at, though.

Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is a young girl who is brutally murdered by her neighbor, the mysterious George Harvey (Stanley Tucci). Her family is thrown into depression by her death. Her father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg), launches his own amateur investigation that does more harm than good, while her mother, Abigail (Rachel Weisz), struggles to cope and eventually moves out to work at a distant orchard. Susie's grandmother, the alcohol-chugging Lynn (Susan Sarandon), must come to try to salvage the family, but she isn't exactly the best parental alternative. "Susie's in heaven," she tells Susie's younger brother who then protests that he has heard heaven doesn't exist; "Well, then, she's dead," is Lynn's careless response. As all of this occurs, Susie watches from somewhere else...somewhere between earth and heaven, in her own perfect world. She needlessly narrates her family's tribulations, trivializing what should have been complex. She watches as her father and her younger sister, Lindsey (Rose McIver), close in on the identity of her killer, a man who somehow still haunts Susie in the "in-between." He watches the Salmons from the shadows of his home, constantly scheming.

The Salmon family, which is oddly functional and dysfunctional at the same time, is quite interesting to watch. Powered by strong performances, these are the moments of the movie I respected...like when Jack, having told Susie he would only develop her film one roll per month, continues with that agreement after her death. Unfortunately, Peter Jackson has this nasty habit of interrupting such scenes with scenes of Susie dancing around on a cloud or running across an endless green lawn. I found Jackson's views of the "in-between" to be pretty to look at, but completely uninteresting. They are terribly indulgent, taking up great portions of a movie that is, frankly, about an hour too long as it is. When, at the one-hour mark, I realized that the only major plot point that had occurred was the death of Susie, I was dismayed. Jackson apparently went effects-crazy here, sucking the movie of any subtle power it might have originally had. You see, The Lovely Bones is a lot of things: pretty, fairly entertaining, and well-produced to name a few, but it is never compelling. For a movie as high-profile and with such darkly dramatic content as this, that is almost unforgivable. Jackson has apparently completely forgotten that, at the basis of every good movie, is a good story. Even The Lord of the Rings movies, as effects-heavy as they were, were always based in a strong story. This movie lacks substance behind its style.

I find myself in a strange situation here. I kind of liked The Lovely Bones, but I should have loved it. I imagine that many people might find the sheer artistry behind it all to be beautiful and enough of a reason to watch it. Who am I to tell you not to, especially since The Lovely Bones is not, generally-speaking, a bad movie? The blame for this movie's inadequacies should fall squarely on the shoulders of Peter Jackson. I fear that he might have been in the world of big-budget extravagance too long to effectively make a movie like The Lovely Bones. Having never read the book on which it is based, I cannot compare the two, but I cannot imagine that this movie, as light on compelling material as it is, would make for a very interesting book. As Alice Sebold's bestseller was so popular, I can only imagine that many changes had to be made. If not...well, then I don't know what to tell you. This movie would have been greatly served by the complete removal of Susie's venture into the in-between or, at least, with replacement scenes that are more subtle and lacking all of those unnecessary visual effects. If Peter Jackson was so determined to keep them as they are, then he should have still focused more on the Salmon family, the heart of the movie. Instead, he focuses on the visual effects and, as pretty as they are, they are never as intriguing as they need to be to carry an entire movie. They're rather hollow.