The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones

Peter Jackson falters when he's not dealing with monsters or trolls. This super natural tale is shaky and uneven and at some points downright boring. I wanted more out of the same director that created three amazing and epic films in the Lord of the Rings series, but he just treads water here. This is not a good movie to follow King Kong with.

A 15-year-old girl is killed by a strange neighbor. The girl find herself hanging on to her family and life through a patch of Heaven before moving into real Heaven.

The movie feels like a sequel to What Dreams May Come than actually having a true vision of its own. The movie has a scattered mental attitude to it, and because it doesn't quite know what it wants to be. However, some of the investigation aspects of the story are very interesting and well-directed. Stanley Tucci is the center of the investigation plot.

Stanley Tucci's performance as the killer neighbor is entertaining, and perhaps the only performance that is worth a damn in the movie. His character is creepy. Yet, there isn't much screen time for the character or the little girl's family looking into her death. Instead, we get a lot of shots of Saoirse Ronan playing around in mid-heaven. And, to be fair Saoirse's character is under-written just like most of the characters in the movie.

Did I mention a lot of shots of Marky-Mark and his funky bunch weeping?

While Peter Jackson seems to be faithful to the book, I don't think the story can be translated to the big screen. The script is a cliff-notes version of the book from what I can tell. Given the rich background of the book, Jackson had a lot of room to explore a lot issues while showing us a convincing murder mystery. Instead, Jackson mashes all the various issues into a disjointed mess that comes across as a disappointment than really being that bad.

I'm not sure I can recommend this movie to anyone outside girls in their teens. Peter Jackson can do better, and he's proven it in the past. And, that makes watching this movie so painful.

Grade: D+

Jackson:  "Okay, you see the Orcs are going to come running out in this direction and the Riders of Rohan are coming from that direction."