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.