Lovely Bones, The – A Movie Review
Susie Salmon, a young girl who has been murdered, watches over her family — and her killer — from heaven. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal. Based on the best selling book by Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones is the story of a 14-year-old girl from suburban Pennsylvania who is murdered by her neighbor. She tells the story from Heaven, showing the lives of the people around her and how they have changed all while attempting to get someone to find her lost body.
Genres: Drama, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Thriller and Adaptation; Running Time: 2 hrs. 19 min.; Release Date: December 11th, 2009 (limited); January 15th, 2010 (wide); MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language.
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Lay and I watched this movie a couple of weekends ago. Obviously I have not been posting much lately due to work demands, but hopefully I’ll be back to a more regular schedule.
This is an extremely dark story from a well written book. It had the potential to be an excellent movie, but managed to fail pretty significantly. The characters did a very good job with the parts they were given. Mark Wahlberg was excellent, showing great depth of character and subelty. Stanley Tuccia, a great actor managed to play his part very well. He maintained some great tension, but was just a little bit over the top with the creepiness.
We see a lot of the little girl in this “in-between place” she inhabits as she works to help the family move beyond the situation. Most of that did not make a lot of sense. Those parts of the movie, combined with narration by this character just didn’t add a lot to move the story along in a meaningful way.
I thought this movie came across as a college class assignment in cinema. It’s like the students had access to some cool CGI software, so they decided to try every tool in the palate during the scenes from the “in-between place.” There was a symbol (I won’t give it away), that seemed to be there for no reason other than an instructor might have said that some thematic convention was needed throughout the movie. There was even a love scene al la “Ghost.”
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