Filmociraptor

You'd think by now that a <sarcasm>well educated man such as myself</sarcasm> would have learned his lesson. Over time, it's become abundantly clear that my enjoyment of a film adapted from a novel is inversely proportional to the amount of time it's been since I've read it. In other words, the longer it's been since I've read a book, the more I like the movie that's based on it. It's a pretty simple equation, but time and time again I'm blown away by how poorly source material is handled on the big screen.

The Lovely Bones follows the afterlife of Susie Salmon ("like the fish") as she watches her family struggle with her loss, but grow stronger and create new relationships as a result of her absence. She watches on from "the in-between," unwilling to pass on to heaven and let go of her family until they meet her there.

Red flags went up right away when Susie, played by super cute Saoirse Ronan (which I spelled correctly my first try AND know how to pronounce), wasn't killed within the first ten minutes of the film. Not that I wanted to see her killed, but the entire novel is told first person as Susie watches from her in-between and she recounts her life through memories. Instead, Peter Jackson sacrifices great story telling and opts to place everything chronologically, which for this story doesn't work very well.

Speaking of Peter Jackson: holy shit did he direct this movie. A bit of advice for the award winning director; you can't film charm bracelets the same way you film orcs chewing flesh or drooling mead down their face. It just doesn't work. Every five seconds we are assaulted with extreme close-ups of objects of importance sure, but the closer you are to the object doesn't signify its importance any better. Its like reading a book. You put it a perfect distance from your face so you can read the words and understand what's going on. But if you mashed your nose into the crease of the page not only would you have no idea what was going on, you'd have a pretty sore nose after a while.

Jackson's trademark flare shows up when Susie's heaven starts to open up, and while it is pretty to look at, it seemed prettier when it was all cut back to back in the trailer. Now, it's all spread out and five or six times throughout the film we get totally diverted from the story and transported into a special effects show reel, totally devoid of plot. I hate to bad mouth Peter Jackson, but he should not have directed this.

The story itself is there. It follows the novel pretty well for the most part at a very basic level, but because the film isn't a three-hour epic like LOTR, characters and story are whittled down to mear splinters of their former selves. The movie is supposed to be about connections, "the lovely bones" that formed in Susie's absence, but wen the movie comes to a close it feels like NOTHING is tied together. There's so many sub-stories flying around that none of them seem to have developed at all.

Shining through the heaping mounds of crap is Stanley Tucci as George Harvey. The unfortunate tale behind that though is that it's kind of a sign that you've got a rough movie on your hands when you can say, "the best part about it was the rapist." You'll probably never feel as uncomfortable during a movie as you will when George lures Susie into his super shady hole in the cornfield, and tries to manipulate her clothes off. It redefines creepy and it earned him an Oscar nom with good reason. 

As far as the rest of the actors go, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon played daughter and estranged mother quite well, with Susie's sister and Marky Mark falling into that "way too intense" zone where acting flirts with disaster. It's typical Wahlbergian cinema, now plagued by the ghost of Andy Samberg. "Say hi to your mother for me."

I would not recommend this movie to anyone who's read the book and is looking for a story to be as creatively told as the novel. It saddens me to say that Peter Jackson missed the mark with this one by miles. Poor adaptation, boring pacing, little to no character development beyond Susie.

2 Stars