The Lovely Bones

Could have been great, but it does carry enough emotional weight
I never read the novel, so that might be the reason I'm not as critical as most when it comes to The Lovely Bones. Peter Jackson as many critics have now said, may not have been the perfect fit for this movie. He is a wonderful visual director, but his vision of the in-between feels out oddly out of place. The CGI is well done and quite beautiful, but it did nothing more than distract me from the characters that I was beginning to care about. Thankfully these sequences were just short enough to not ruin the experience. The acting was pretty solid. Mark Wahlberg is often hit or miss, but he was suprisingly believable here. Susan Sarandon provided some offbeat humor and Rachel Weisz was decent, even though her role was thinly written. The two standouts were Saorise Ronan and Stanley Tucci. I see a big career in the future for this young actress. There is something about her that grabs and holds your attention. Stanley Tucci was creepy to the core, though I find it hard to believe that...

Why is this movie getting such bad reviews?!
I'm a fan of the book this movie is based on, and although Peter Jackson took some liberties with the story, the result was an emotional and visually stunning film. "The Lovely Bones" tells the story of Suzie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), a 14-year-old girl who is murdered by a neighborhood predator (Stanley Tucci). As the Salmon family copes with their tragedy, Susie's spirit hovers in the "in-between" that exists between heaven and Earth. Unable to let go of her previous life, Susie keeps a watchful eye on her family and her murderer, hoping that justice will ultimately be served and that she and her loved ones can finally move on.

I appreciated that the film didn't show Susie's violent murder on screen, which would have been extremely disturbing. The film does a fantastic job of portraying Susie in her in-between world, which is beautiful to watch. I wish Susan Sarandon was given more screen time, because she is hilarious in her role as the drunk grandmother. Tucci gives a...

creative, intriguing but not quite great
The Lovely Bones combines very good acting, suspense, drama and even thriller elements to make a good movie about a young girl who dies--and then has quite a few experiences--after she passes away! The animation was rather well done and the choreography works very well; the cinematography is particularly good as well. The script was also quite good; but I would say that the plot moves along a bit too slow; they could have edited this down by ten or fifteen minutes to make the plot tighter.

When the action starts, we quickly meet 14 year old Susie Salmon, (Saoirse Ronan), who lives with her parents Abigail and Jack (Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg) and her siblings in a small Pennsylvania town in the early 70s. Susie is a happy child; and she has quite a crush on a young guy at her high school, Ray (Reece Ritchie).

However, things don't go well for Susie and her family. Unbeknownst to them there's a neighbor, George Harvey (brilliantly portrayed by Stanley Tucci)...

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