In bringing Alice Sebold's acclaimed novel to the screen, filmmaker Peter Jackson seems to have gotten the basic plot of The Lovely Bones, but nothing else that made it stand out on the page. The movie is scattered, confused, and surprisingly weak. There are wild swings in tones, characters that aren't even developed to half the level they were in the novel, and an overall sense that Jackson understands the plot, but doesn't have a clue where the heart of the story lies. This is supposed to be a story about love and loss, but the film is mechanical when it should be engaging.

Just like in the original story, we are introduced to 14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saorise Ronan), who narrates the film, and tells us up front that she is dead, and that she met her end on December 6, 1973, at the hand of a man from her own neighborhood. We see glimpses of Susie's life - The love for model sailboats that she shared with her father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg), how she dreamed of being a photographer, and the building feelings she felt for a fellow and older classmate (Reece Ritchie). All of this came to an abrupt end while crossing a cornfield on her way home from school. She had a run-in with the man across the street from her home, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), who lures her into an underground room, and murders her. Susie is sent to an afterlife, where she watches her family get torn apart by her disappearance. Jack becomes obsessed with finding information on Susie's killer, her mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz) has to leave when she can no longer stand the pain, and Susie's younger sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) becomes suspicious of Mr. Harvey, when he begins stalking her as well.

All of this is emotionally gripping on the written page, but the screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Jackson misses the point, or sometimes takes some extreme short cuts in order to fit it all into a two hour narrative. The actions of the characters sometimes make little sense in the script. and the movie never focuses on them enough to the point that we become emotionally attached to them. One of the key victims of this treatment is Susie herself. As soon as she is murdered, she becomes rather boring. We see her wander around in the afterlife, which is pulled off beautifully on a technical level with special effects creating a dream-like landscape, but never grabs us on any emotional level. It quickly turns into Susie walking around a technical demo, and grinds the narrative to almost a total halt whenever the story switches over to her.

The Lovely Bones is a complex story. Perhaps too complex to put on the screen. Characters have become overly simplified, and the narrative has lost much of its power. Part of this has to do with the way Jackson has softened the blow of Susie's murder. It occurs off screen, and no mention of the sexual assault is made. This was obviously done to secure a PG-13 rating, but this is obviously a story for mature audiences, so why was the effort made to tone it down? Other sacrifices include the character of George Harvey losing much of his personality in the transition. While the performance by Stanley Tucci is chilling, the character is disappointingly thin. He's nothing more than a standard creepy, shifty-eyed killer type, and somewhat boring. Then again, the narrative jumps around so much here, it never gives any of the characters a chance to stand out. Jack's obsession to find the truth about his daughter doesn't have half the emotional impact as on the page, and often seems convoluted how he stumbles upon the right information.

So, the obvious question becomes, would I like the film better if I had no knowledge of the source material? I think I would have been even more confused, frankly. The choppy narrative, under-written characters, and sometimes confused editing prevent us from getting a real handle on what's going on. I think this is a case of the filmmakers feeling so close to the source material that they forget to clue us in. Or maybe years of handling epics like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong have lessened Jackson's ability to relate to human drama and characters. I can't say for sure. He seems to be trying for a similar vibe here that he created in 1994's Heavenly Creatures, which successfully blended spectacle with drama and tragedy. He's lost the heart with this film. We don't feel the sense of loss with the family, we don't feel the horror with the murder, and we don't feel the wonder with the scenes in the afterlife. All of this makes The Lovely Bones a curiosity, rather than the engaging experience it wants to be.
I don't want to put across the sense that this is a bad, or even an unwatchable movie. It's disappointing, even largely so if you're a fan of the novel. Maybe the fans were right when they said the story was unfilmable. Maybe Jackson wasn't the right person to tell this story. All I know is that the film adaptation of The Lovely Bones knows the music, but it doesn't know the words.

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