The Lovely Bones

Can this movie really get under someone’s skin and make them rave about it? Peter Jackson is once again great in terms of details; for example, the depiction of a chilling clash of the purest childhood innocence with the most terrible human evil (murder) is unique in its credibility. But the multi-level collage that follows the promising start of the film, and especially the final outcome of the individual plot lines, raises a single key question: “What the hell did the filmmaker want to say with this confused film?” Clarify the meaning of specific scenes and characters would actually require a dozen such questions, but I do not want to spoil this for anyone. So I ask only one harmless question: What is the meaning of Susan Sarandon’s comic character for the dramaturgical concept of this film? Or is she in the film only because the director is a fan of hers? The problem with The Lovely Bones doesn’t lie in its fantasy images (those are beautiful when they stand alone), but in its completely dysfunctional narrative vision. (02/23/2010)

Peter Jackson has lost his sense and has become a shallow megalomaniac with a tendency towards the kitsch. When it comes to the shallowness of the dialogues, Lovely Bones is like Emmerich’s 2012, and I’m not exaggerating, but in a wannabe intense drama this is a lot worse. Are we supposed to laugh with that scene about the clumsy grandma? It actually reminded me of that cringe-worthy Czech film Panská Jízda with Martin Dejdar. Is the film portraying coming to terms with the loss of a family member with dad letting himself be beaten up, mum going somewhere to the countryside to pick apples and the siblings behaving as if nothing had happened? Is Jackson taking the piss? The direction and performances are excellent, but what’s the point when every word uttered by the characters made me want to plug my ears and shake my head at how shallow and fake it sounded. When the smiling kids start walking among the cornrows, I was reminded of the terrible final scene of Knowing (but at least the plot of that one had some balls) and I just wrote off the film and decided to have fun with every incoming cliché for the rest of the runtime. PS: Anyone who dares to compare this film with The Fountain (it shares only part of the theme and Rachel Weisz), either positively (it’s just as good), or negatively (it’s just as bad), or to rate the visuals and the story better than Avatar’s is either stupid or blind. PS2: This is the same guy that made Braindead, OMG! (01/04/2010)

Jackson may be one of the filmmakers who can make whatever they want, but with this film, he has cruelly missed the mark. He has drowned a completely bland and uninteresting story in kitschy images that stink of plastic and are put on the captions of the Watchtower by the Jehovah's Witnesses. Only three things are decent: a) the haughtily sleazy Stanley Tucci, b) the arrival of the mother-in-law, and c) the spy in the house. The rest of the film, though not boring through and through, is a desperately empty spectacle. 2 ½. (02/28/2010)

Unfortunately, exactly the type of film in which I feel as if someone had let me read “The Watchtower" all night, necrophilic romance edition. The script of the Holy Trinity of J-W-B is a salad made up of pathetic monologues and shabby dialogues without a single hint of lightness. PJ directs some passages typically (jumps to non-event details, expressive subjective perspective, involvement of a monotonous soundtrack), while sometimes there are even fairly solid scenes (searching Pederast's barracks - although logically meaningless, he nevertheless works masterfully with tension and dual perspective). The fragmentation of the narrative perspective is so unconceptual that it prevented me from taking anything in the film seriously and, most importantly, enjoying anything. The visual stylization is quite cheap in places; in fact, it might be worth considering whether the secret of impressiveness lies only in color filters, glowing halogens and "nice objects". Particularly the trick passages are way over done, disgusting, inconsistent, flashy, without any order (even if they had only a subtle hint of the association that would give them shape). The CGI screams sexlessness, such an excessive and at the same time absolutely "backdrop" artistic solution is not seen very often. The involvement of the music is utterly catastrophic - instead of amplifying any emotion, it makes The Lovely Bones into whining emo, from which only stupid sentiment sticks out. I understand that Peter is fascinated by "being between worlds" and that not all family films can be as brilliant as Braindead... and yet the template of a pedophile killer based on Rapist Glasses? In fact, this is low end and Jackson's worst film, and it is a testament to the gradual loss of judgement and self-criticism. (10/07/2012)

If there’s nothing happening, not even a death can change things (screenplay) and less often means more (special effects). The images we see are often beautiful, but also absolutely empty of emotion. It would never have occurred to me that Peter Jackson would end up suffering from the syndrome that accompanies the works of Tarsem Singh. But in the first half-hour it has everything it needs, including emotions, which are so important for movies like this. But this just makes the rest of the movie that much more painful, because this outstanding “prolog" just proves that the movie could have been different. For instance, more in terms of hints instead of spectacular CGI landscapes. (01/03/2010)

Genre mishmash, emotional turmoil, perfect actors, and most importantly, an unexpected spectacle. Peter Jackson has created an entirely intimate story where even the most magnificent special effects shot remains a personal desire. Plot-wise, it may suffice with the simplest premise, but the tension, tears, and magnificent camera did not even let me properly think about it. A complex and evolving experience. (01/05/2010)

Too long, very uninteresting in places, full of images that might have looked better in a photograph. At times it felt like two or three films mixed together. The only thing that worked for me in this film was the music, it was perfectly able to complement the images the film wanted to show me. The pictures could be pretty, but they don't work as a 135-minute film. It can be moving, but so can any movie where someone's daughter is murdered, where the deceased talks about their departure, that final one. Maybe I was expecting too much, something more different, something more suspenseful, something with a better story; this one didn't move along very well, plus the ending didn't add much (was the filmmaker just trying to say "The mills of the gods grind slowly"?). A better 2 stars. (06/28/2010)

In short, weird. Jackson is a good director, but the story jumps from one level to another too often and so it’s hard for the viewer to build a sufficiently strong bond with any of them. Visually exquisite and emotionally very strong scene from “purgatory" sometimes contrast weirdly with the “real world" (yes, mainly with smokey Susan Sarandon), but despite it all, Jackson manages to hold it all together. Sometimes it isn’t about what story you tell, but how you tell it. (04/16/2010)

I'm not familiar with the book, but the film The Lovely Bones strikes me as a very strange combination of several completely different films, a kind of cat and mouse that is lucky to have good actors in it. It's the most interesting spectacle ever while the main character (Saoirse Ronan and those eyes of hers!) is alive, and then whenever the unusually slimy Stanley Tucci is doing something. The scenes from the afterlife landscape seemed to me rather self-serving and it seems that Peter Jackson just needed to cram digital magic in somewhere. Completely out of place was Susan Sarandon's comical grandmother's interjection, not to mention the unbelievably stupid ending. The biggest unlucky thing about this film, though, is that it offers so many comparisons to What Dreams May Come all the time. And it simply could not come out of such a comparison well, not even if it was better. (10/25/2015)

Lynne Ramsay was originally supposed to adapt the novel into a movie before the soft cuties Spielberg and Jackson took it away from her and made it into a bouncy castle that made the novel’s author herself want to puke. Esoteric vegan lemonade for parents who need to cope with the loss of their offspring by imagining that they're in a better place now, all of it seasoned with the greatest stereotypes and clichés in the character of Stanley Tucci. As goofy as the film is, I'm all the more annoyed at how it drowns out some masterful visual ideas (no, I don't mean the ones in the heavenly veil, but the dollhouse tour, for example) or entire sequences (the creaky floorboard in the pedophile's house). Jackson is slowly becoming the kind of director here who even adds leaves to the sidewalk digitally, and that's not a good way to go. (06/29/2020)

I saw The Lovely Bones for the first time sometime just after New Year (in the comfort of my home) and given its undeniable formal quality, I went to see the "new Jackson" once more in the cinema and I can say I was exceedingly pleased. While I'll admit to holes in the script, and I might have some reservations about Jackson's handling of the story (especially the interweaving of "life" above and below was rather odd at times), there's still the fact that formally it's just a blast. The way Peter Jackson is able to build and especially escalate the tension is famous (the concept of preparing the murder – a display of impeccable filmmaking, the key scene in the "clubhouse" juxtaposed with the preparation of dinner with progressively more and more apprehension). The visual whirlwind from the "world above" combining the best of Gilliam and Burton (if anyone considers it lame kitsch, that's their problem)) stood out on the screen perfectly, plus the chosen (and very nice) soundtrack fit like a glove. If I wanted to (since I don't) deal with bullshit like what was the point of Susan Sarandon's character or why Wahlberg's character acted rather unlikely and weird at times, it's clear that "objectively" it would be somewhere between 50-60%. However, dazed as I was by the top-notch visuals, the acting of the superbly cast Saoirse Ronan, and the perfectly sleazy Stanley Tucci, I’m (gladly) turning two blind eyes and aiming my rating somewhere between 85-90%. And I'm going for the book and I'm really looking forward to it. :) (01/10/2010)