Review: The Lovely Bones

Loveless

It's never a good sign when a film is pushed back from its initial release date. This film popped up in a few theatres in New York and Los Angeles in mid December and was supposed to go wide on Christmas Day. But then the early word on the film was resoundingly negative, and the studio decided to put a hold on the wide release date in order to shift the marketing campaign from its original adult oriented audience to one that included tween-to-teenage girls, like the ones who give their last allowances to see the next Twilight picture. The story focusing on a strong, young female (absent in that other series) may be appealing to many girls. It's a notion that is appealing to me, as well as many other aspects of this film. However, this film is clearly a case where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and this whole film lacks severely in emotion weight.

Based on the huge bestseller by Alice Sebold, the film tells the tale of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) who was brutally raped and murdered by her serial killing, pedophile neighbor (Stanley Tucci) in the winter of 1973. Departed from this world, she now exists in a land known as the "In Between", a world that literally lies between Heaven and Earth. There she indulges on her own dreamlike sensibilities while watching her family coping with her death (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz play her parents, Susan Surandon her boozy grandma) as well as watching her killer down the street.

Peter Jackson may seem like an odd choice to direct this film, but as seen with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson is a director who is capable of balancing compelling character drama with marvelous visual spectacles. But here, he never finds the right balance. The scenes in the In Between feel lifeless and flat, thanks to some subpar visual effects, which translates to not much purpose for the story and a static part of the film. The scenes amongst the living also feel hollow in their presentation as no clear motivation for any character can be established. I refuse to believe that Jackson is incapable of producing a world that gets an audience invested that doesn't exist in some far off land. This just isn't the film.

But the problem extends deeper than just Jackson's direction. The script, co-written by Jackson and his fellow Rings writers Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens, never quite captures the right tone and pace for a successful adaptation. The exposition to the film feels rushed and spotty, and from then on, the film switches in tone all too frequently and never settles on which world is more appealing. The script pushes a lot of these characters to superficial levels and wastes many of the talent. The villain's final comeuppance is also quite disappointing as it fails to deliver a satisfactory conclusion in correlation to his horrendous crime.

The lovely young Ronan delivers a strong performance trying desperately to work with material that really doesn't want to work back. She continues to show a lot of strong emotion that she can bring to such a rich character, certainly making good on a promise she made more than two years ago with Atonement. The other major performer in this film Tucci, an actor who delivers great work in nearly every film he's in, and here he manages to create the correct mode of disgust and tension. Tucci's on track of getting his first Oscar nomination, and while I don't think this film is the best use of his talent, it's certainly one that showcases what a reliable actor he is. Wahlberg and Weisz are also good actors, but they feel wasted in roles that never fulfill the right emotional depths, and Surandon feels downright out-of-place in a role that provides awkward moments of comic relief that feel unjustified.

There are some things to admire in this film, and there are specific moments in which Jackson finds the right way to bring the tension (specifically, the first meeting between Susie and her killer, and the suspense between him and her sister when she breaks in his house looking for evidence). But in the end, the film never comes together to create something that is to get excited about. It sits on the screen and never jumps off to become a well rounded piece of cinema. Even the best aspect of the film, Brian Eno's brilliant score on its own terms, is such an oppressive force in the film that it suffocates the images and dilutes the emotions. This was once thought to be a serious Oscar contender, and now it looks like only Tucci will carry the film to the Kodak. Maybe the tweenage girls will eat it up. I just know it isn't something that's on my menu. **1/2 / ****; GRADE: C+