The Lovely Bones

OPENING: 01/15/2010

STUDIO: DreamWorks

RUN TIME: 135 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
The story of a life and everything that came after…

Opening Statement
Once just a little-known cult film director, Peter Jackson catapulted himself into position as one of the most-lauded modern filmmakers with his masterful Lord of the Rings trilogy and epic remake of King Kong, capturing the attention of critics and audiences alike. So it’s no surprise his adaptation of Alice Sebold’s much-loved novel The Lovely Bones was hotly anticipated. How does Jackson fare stepping into less bombastic cinematic territory? Not very well, I’m afraid.

Facts of the Case
Set in the early 1970s, the story centers on 14-year-old girl Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan, Atonement), an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. Susie enjoys taking photographs with the camera she received as a birthday gift from her parents, has a desperate crush on a boy named Ray (Reece Ritchie, 10,000 BC), and generally loves life. Alas, Susie’s time on this earth is cut tragically short when she is brutally raped and murdered by George Harvey (Stanley Tucci, Blind Date (2007)), a quiet neighbor who lives down the street. George did a good job of covering up any evidence of the crime, leaving the Salmon family suffering from both the loss of their daughter and an inability to reach some sort of closure. This is only the beginning of their story.

The film follows Susie into the afterlife; not heaven, but what is referred to as the "In-Between," where she must confront a variety of personal issues before moving on. Meanwhile, Susie’s father Jack (Mark Wahlberg, The Happening) obsessively attempts to solve his daughter’s disappearance, while her mother (Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener) moves away to deal with the grief. Even with Susie making several mysterious attempts to reach out to her family from beyond, will the Salmons (living or deceased) ever truly find peace?

The Evidence
Here’s the thing: when you’re making a movie that involves the rape and murder of a teenage girl, you have automatically indebted your film to its audience. Such a horrible occurrence plays sharply on the emotions of every viewer, and it’s up to the filmmakers to demonstrate the film is both worthy and mature enough to deal with the subject matter responsibly and appropriately. If they succeed, they present a strong and powerful story. If not, they run the risk of delivering a genuinely repulsive experience. Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones falls into the latter, offering up a bewildering concoction of elements that are by turns exasperating and infuriating.

The Lovely Bones is essentially a fusion of standard-issue murder mystery and super-cheesy paranormal melodrama. Let’s tackle the murder mystery first. It’s remarkable just how mundane and unconvincing the scenes in which Jack attempts to discover what happened to his daughter are. I think a small portion of the blame lies on the performance of Mark Wahlberg, who never quite manages to sell his portrayal of the grieving father. Another portion rests on the screenplay, which makes every member of the Salmon family (aside from Susie) terribly one-dimensional. Wahlberg doesn’t seem to have been given any direction other than, "Look disturbed and somewhat frantic," in every scene, and there’s only so much he can do with that. Speaking of direction, the largest portion of blame lies with director Peter Jackson, whose helming of the mystery sequences falls surprisingly flat. An average episode of Law & Order generates more suspense. Stanley Tucci’s genuinely creepy performance goes a little way towards creating some measure of tension, but that’s a small consolation.

Saoirse (Ser-sha) Ronan spends most of her performance gawking in wonder at Jackson’s RoseArt screensaver fantasy world, which is a much less involving version of heaven offered up in Vincent Ward’s What Dreams May Come. The scenes certainly look expensive, but there’s an odd poverty of imagination behind their construction. Moments that should have taken our breath away instead seem all too ordinary. This is only made worse by Susie’s strange journey. Unsure of where she’s going until she gets there, the ultimate destination is so cornball the audience gets the sinking feeling we just wasted more than 10 bucks and two hours of our time. That is when you realize just how nauseating this movie truly is: cornball happy endings maybe okay in my book, but not when you’re using the rape and murder of a child as a springboard to get there.

The film is rated PG-13 and thus can only go so far in its portrayal of the violent event that triggers the story. In fact, the film goes out of its way to be as vague and non-specific as possible, turning the rape and murder into a mystically unhappy dream sequence. It’s tastefully done, but so purposeless and vague it robs the moment of its required intensity. I’m not saying more should have been shown, but rather the imagery displayed should have packed a stronger punch.

Frankly, The Lovely Bones had started to grate on me well before that scene arrived, thanks to the poorly-written and incredibly obnoxious narration Ronan provides. Early in the film, there’s a sequence where Susie is sitting in the mall, informing us that she is being spied on by her murderer. The camera cuts to images of an ominous-looking man who keeps looking at Susie. I forget his name at the moment, so let’s call him Mr. Smith. Susie says, "By the way, it’s not Mr. Smith who was watching me. Mr. Smith never hurt anyone in his entire life. His daughter died of leukemia a year and a half after I did." What condescending crap! So you set up a suspicious red herring just so you can tell the audience their suspicions are wrong? Then, adding insult to injury, you try to make us feel guilty about suspecting him because his daughter is dying of leukemia? The guy’s not even a character in the film. We never see or hear from him again. So why is that fact relevant? Rarely have I felt such an urge to show a movie screen one of my fingers.

I also have an issue with Susan Sarandon’s character, who does not belong in this film. Look, Sarandon is an excellent actress and does a good job with the role. However, the last thing The Lovely Bones needs is a wacky, chain-smoking, alcoholic grandma to provide us with a few chuckles. Hey everybody, forget about that whole rape thing for a few minutes. Look at Grandma being all crazy! I could continue to list my complaints, from Brian Eno’s anachronistic score to the manner in which the film completely wastes the talented Rachel Weisz, but there’s no point in beating a dead horse.

Closing Statement
I wouldn’t say The Lovely Bones offended me, but it certainly pissed me off. Not just because the movie is bad, but because the talent involved is capable of so much better. This should have been one of the year’s strongest films. Instead, it’s one of the worst.

The Verdict
3/10