THE LOVELY BONES ☆☆☆

Peter "The Lord of the Rings" Jackson graces "The Lovely Bones" with the same CG, grand visual sweep he used for his Middle Earth trilogy and the romantic tackle of "King Kong," and he doesn't disappoint here, for "The Lovely Bones," but he does for the rest of the movie.

Jackson's approach to the material, though very inspired and non lacking in emotional depth, wasn't the right approach. Alice Sebold's novel, beloved and considered the best written literature of the past decade, and a book I did read before the film release, called for something more real, bold and purposeful in the themes it represented: the rape and murder of a young girl and the affect it has on a family and community ongoing years after the girl's death. Jackson spends time on it, but not enough, and more on the mystery of who killed Susie Salmon and the inner darkness of the person we follow who did commit the crime, George Harvey. Not to say the suspense and Mr. Harvey in his dark basement/house plotting murder wasn't compelling to watch, but we needed to see more of the emotional struggle of the Salmon family, and likewise the friends, including Susie's crush, Ray, and Ruth, the girl with the only connection to Susie in the afterlife, characters that were primary in the original novel. Also, despite it was one of the many draws to the book and for Jackson and Weta, no doubt, the creation and representation of a fantastic world, Susie and the In-between shouldn't have been considered more than the earth stuff. Actually, Jackson and screenwriter's Fran Walsh (Jackson's partner) and Philippa Boyens equally spend time, script-wise, on Susie/The In-Between and the events below on earth, Mr. Harvey, The Salmons, Ray and Ruth, but it didn't work, and, again, despite it was one of the aspects Peter Jackson was perfect to helm the project, the CG-rendered fantasy world of Susie's Heaven was not the right way to go for Sebold's very real story of rape, murder and turmoil. In contrast to "The Lord of the Rings" and "King Kong," "The Lovely Bones" is too romantic to take seriously. Viewers have asked why didn't Jackson take the same approach for "Heavenly Creatures," and my guess would be he didn't want to make the same movie and I would agree, but after seeing "The Lovely Bones," the movie probably would have worked better that way.

An inspired job by by Stanley Tucci as George Harvey and Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon, and because the film was centered on them their roles blasted off the screen to make it better than it seemed for Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon as Susie's lost/heartbroken parents and boozy, free-spirited grandmother Lynn, who all did equally nice work.

I'll still say I remain a loyal fan of Peter Jackson. "The Lord of the Rings" and "King King" are some of my favorite movies, but his style of storytelling of a bigger scope was too much for what should have been a smaller movie.