Jackson’s latest film is a welcome step down after the excesses of King Kong. It still doesn’t hit the spot though. One reviewer has described the film as Heavenly Creatures meets Lord of The Rings, and while stylistically that’s true, it’s pretty limited to describe a film by just using the director’s earlier films (“yah, Roland Emmerich’s new film, 2012, falls somewhere between Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow” – duh!). If this film is like anything else, it’s like that crazily bad Robin Williams film about heaven (1998’s What Dreams May Come). But only just. And you can’t really compare it to any other films about serial child killers because, well, fortunately there aren’t too many of those out there.
While the other-worldly scenes in The Lovely Bones look impressive (as anything that Weta Digital touches usually does), they really jar against the early 1970’s period pieces. Maybe they remind me of my youth, but anything set in the 70’s and 80’s always looks good on the big screen. It’s probably the bad haircuts and dreadful fashions.
Speaking of bad haircuts, we’re treated to a pretty terrible one courtesy of Mark “Don’t you care about the bees?” Wahlburg. He plays the father of the murdered Suzie Salmon, and to give him his credit, isn’t as bad as he usually is. Aside from a few scenes where he falls back into his trademark ‘sniff the fart’ acting, he does a pretty good job of playing a broken father; his hobby, making ‘ships in bottles’ providing one of the more awesomely executed fantasy sequences.
Saoirse Ronan is just as watchable as she was in her few standout scenes in Atonement, and she definitely has a bright future ahead of her in film. The cast is rounded out by Rachel Weisz (sleepwalking mother), Susan Sarandon (hard-living Grandmother providing the only light relief in the film) and Stanley Tucci as the creepily realised serial killer.
The Lovely Bones really falls down (no pun intended) in the last 20 minutes. After an exciting cat and mouse sequence between Suzie’s killer and her younger sister, the ending falls flat and is simply frustrating. I’m not sure if Jackson has improved on the book (I haven’t read it) but apparently the ending was made more violent to please American test audiences. Like Saoirse Ronan’s previous film, I’d have been happy with some genuine atonement.
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