Entertainment, Movies - Navy Times

Acting strong, but ‘Lovely Bones’ falls short

When a movie is made from a best-selling novel, expectations often are high — as are fears that it won’t measure up to what millions are anticipating.

It’s understandable, of course, and useless. A movie must stand on its own, as an individual work. In that regard, “The Lovely Bones” is a disappointment.

(Full disclosure: I haven’t read the book, so my impressions are untainted by comparisons.) Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the well-loved novel by Alice Sebold boasts good performances, by Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon, the young murder victim who narrates the tale, and Stanley Tucci as George Harvey, her killer. This is not a spoiler; we know all of this information almost from the start. This isn’t a murder mystery because no mystery is involved, at least from the audience’s point of view.

Jackson’s scattershot direction ultimately falls short. As gifted a director as exists when it comes to using computer-generated effects — perhaps you’ve heard of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy — Jackson here can’t quite square the technology with the emotion.

At times, his images of the In-Between, the realm from which Susie watches over the devastation wreaked upon her family by her murder, are gorgeous.

Yet at others, particularly when she first arrives there, they are so cartoony that you half expect her to visit the Island of Misfit Toys or pay the Abominable Snow Monster a visit.

The story takes place in the ‘70s, an era Jackson re-creates to perfection. Susie is a high-school student, a normal kid living with her parents, Jack and Abigail (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz), and younger sister, Lindsey (Rose McIver). Like any kid, she has crushes, enjoys hobbies — her photography skills will come in handy later in the story — and generally has fun hanging out. But one day, she doesn’t come home from school. We know why. But her parents do not, despite the best efforts of the police (Michael Imperioli plays a detective), and their loss, coupled with the uncertainty, eats away at them.

That leads to a visit from Abigail’s booze-soaked mother, played by a wildly overacting Susan Sarandon, and to separation.

Some of the Earth-bound scenes are effective, including an exchange between Imperioli’s detective and George. A nearly silent showdown between Jack and George, in George’s backyard, where the two men suddenly come to the realization of shared knowledge of guilt, is even better. And Jackson’s depiction of Lindsey trying to find evidence that George is the killer is edge-of-your-seat stuff, making you wish for more of this kind of thing.

Tucci is terrific, creepy as can be, but in subtle ways, as befits the vile nature of his character. Ronan is also good, though her role is more difficult. There is one particularly affecting scene, in which she glimpses her sister experiencing a rite of passage she’ll never have, but for the most part, she’s much better with her feet on the ground, as it were.

The same is true of “The Lovely Bones” overall, as well. It’s a competently made movie — in Jackson’s hands it could hardly be anything but — yet rarely a moving one.

———

Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language.