 DVD Review - The Lovely Bones
By Tamsin Cracknell
This book-turned-movie has garnered a terrible rap from critics for being shallow, cheesy, and disrespectful of the source material. Honestly, though, it really isn't that bad.
After Alice Sebold's novel dominated best-seller lists for the whole of 2002, and Jackson snapped up the film rights with money from his own pocket, it was inevitable that people's expectations of the screen version would be a little on the high side.
The tone of the film is admittedly difficult to gauge: 14-year-old Susie Salmon (Ronan) narrates the story of her own murder by her seemingly benign, middle-aged neighbour George Harvey (Tucci), and the ensuing devastating consequences on her family as they try to mourn their loss.
Since the murder is no mystery to Susie or the audience, the story unfolds like a thriller as Susie tries to communicate with her inconsolable father (Wahlberg) to tell him that her murderer is living in the neighbourhood. Suspense is not something Jackson struggles with here, and the build-up to Harvey's retribution is enjoyably tense.
If that was the only path the plot followed, The Lovely Bones might not have incurred the indignation of so many reviewers. The fly in the ointment, however, is the fact that Susie's narration takes place from limbo – not quite heaven, but not quite life either – conceptualised and rendered by Jackson with the feverish excitement of a unicorn-obsessed cheerleader.
Famed for his knack with Armageddon-like battle sagas and giant lovesick gorillas, Jackson was clearly eager to unleash his CG prowess on a project tried by many, but successfully achieved by few: illustrating the afterlife.
 To be fair, Sebold's book is founded on the premise that everyone will end up in their own unique imagining of heaven, so expansive moonscapes, an inexhaustible wardrobe and romance novel cover imagery are probably appropriate to the tastes of a teenage girl in the 1970s. (Jackson allegedly used The Partridge Family for inspiration.) All in all, though, it's a bit of a non sequitur that smacks of plastic and tartrazine, and undermines the whole film with its sheer excess.
It's a pity, really, as young Ronan is effortlessly winsome, and Stanley Tucci achieves a truly impressive level of comb-over creepiness. Early test audiences reportedly found him so deplorable that they demanded a more brutal end for his character.
The Lovely Bones is a brave attempt at an impossible concept, executed before the expectant glares of a million disciples of Oprah's Book Club. It won't go down in history, but we're reluctant to lambast it for trying.
Directed: Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings)
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz
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