THE LOVELY BONES Movie Review
The Lovely Bones, one of our top Christmas Movies of 2009, will be released to theaters on December 11, 2009. The movie stars Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli, and directed by Peter Jackson. If you are planning to go see the movie, here are a few movie reviews from around the web to help you make up your mind.
Cinematical‘s Review of The Lovely Bones
I feel as though two directors inhabit Peter Jackson’s body, and are fighting for dominance. One is the gifted visionary who made Middle Earth glimmer just so, and captured every emotional nuance hobbits, elves, and men could express. The other revels in slapstick and CGI and believes you can never have enough dinosaurs or dwarf jokes. Unfortunately, it’s that Jackson who directed The Lovely Bones, and the film is littered with tonal missteps, outlandish effects, plot holes, thinly drawn characters, and an emotional immaturity that’s utterly at odds with the story. Read More
The Star-Ledger – NJ.com‘s Review of The Lovely Bones
But it’s also about discovering something. Susie — trapped in a kind of afterlife limbo — finally finds the determination to move on. And her parents and siblings heal, at last.
At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
Yet Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s novel is often clumsy, thick-fingered work. Instead of poetry, it gives us psychedelic light shows. Instead of closure, it provides contrivance. Read More
Huffington Post‘s Review of The Lovely Bones
There’s always a challenge in adapting a novel as popular as Alice Sebold’s best-selling The Lovely Bones into film form – particularly if the book also features the supernatural and has a time frame that seems particularly fluid. After all, the book and film’s narrator, Susie Salmon (Saorise Ronan), is a ghost, murdered before the story starts, telling her tale from heaven. In the book (and, to a lesser extent, in the film), she is untethered in time. While she can focus on the story’s present (Norristown, PA, circa 1973), she can be in all times at once, as when she does a quick tour of all the other victims of her killer. Read More
The Lovely Bones Synopsis: Based on the critically acclaimed best-selling novel by Alice Sebold, and directed by Oscar® winner Peter Jackson from a screenplay by Jackson & Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens, “The Lovely Bones” centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal.
You can watch the trailer here.
