Wednesday 3rd March 2010

The Lovely Bones

Director: Peter Jackson
Year: 2009
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci

Unfortunately all the reviews I had read/ heard about this movie turned out to be correct. It's not a bad film as such, it's just that nothing really happens.

The film is based on the book Alice Sebold, where a 14-year old girl (Susie Salmon, played here by Ronan) is murdered, and then watches over her family in a place somewhere between heaven and earth.

The problem with the film is that, after Susie gets murdered (about half an hour in), there's not really much story left to tell. Whilst Susie watches over her family, she doesn't really do anything to intervene in their lives. We get to watch how they deal with their grief, but none of the family ever really does anything note-worthy enough to make a film about.

As far as I can remember (and it's a long time ago I read it, so I might be wrong) the film is pretty faithful to the book. And I didn't have these issues with the book, so I can only really conclude that the story just doesn't translate all that well to film. Having said that, the performances are all good, and the film looks amazing - especially the wonderful scenes of Susie in the in-between world.

Rating: 3 out of 5

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