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The Lovely Bones
The lovely, boring, aimless bones
Reviewed by Dan Stoffel
Published on 01/21/2010
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C
Rated PG-13
Directed Peter Jackson
Starring Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley
Tucci and Susan Sarandon
Harkins Theatres
Had you told me back in 2003 after “The Return of the King”
completed the incredible “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy—or even in
2005 after the flawed but fun “King Kong”—that I would be sitting in
a theater struggling to stay awake during a movie directed by Peter
Jackson, I would have thought you were crazy. Sadly, you would
have been right; “The Lovely Bones” is a major disappointment.
Based on the bestselling 2002 novel by Alice Sebold, “The Lovely
Bones” tells the story of Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), a young
teenager in Pennsylvania who is raped and murdered on her way
home from school one night.
She then spends years in “the in-
between,” a kind of rest stop on the way to heaven, looking down
on her family and friends as they try to come to terms with her death
and to solve the mystery of her murder. Susie’s disappearance
causes a rift between her parents; father Jack (Mark Wahlberg) is
obsessed with finding her killer, while mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz)
eventually feels that it’s time for the family to move on. Meanwhile,
sad-sack detective Len Fenerman (Michael Imperioli, who just
doesn’t look like a “Len Fenerman”) wallows in guilt over his inability
to solve the crime, and Susie’s classmate Ruth (Carolyn Dando), the
“weird girl” in the class, senses Susie’s presence, thinking that
maybe Susie is trying to tell her something.
One might not think it possible after Jackson’s triumph with Tolkien,
but the director almost seems to have taken on too much with
Sebold’s novel, which deals with grief, loss and acceptance along
with a murder mystery (though it’s no mystery to viewers) over a
span of several years. The result is a film that doesn’t know where
it’s going: scenes of family drama are interspersed with snippets of
Susie in the in-between, which, though pretty, come off as little
more than an excuse for Jackson to showcase his digital effects
company Weta Digital; and a thriller concerning the creepy neighbor
George Harvey (Stanley Tucci) is played against the comic relief of
boozy Grandma Lynn (Susan Sarandon).
The best things to come out of “The Lovely Bones” are wonderful
performances by Saoirse Ronan and, especially, Stanley Tucci as
the menacing dollhouse maker and serial killer. At the other end of
the spectrum though, Mark Wahlberg once again proves that he
should have gone back to underwear ads after his home run in
“Boogie Nights.”
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