#Review: THE LOVELY BONES
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Awesome Applesauce: Charles Quevedo
Based on the best-selling novel by Alice Sebold, THE LOVELY BONES centers around the character, "Susie Salmon" (played by actress, Saoirse Ronan)... "like the fish". Susie is a 14 year-old red-head, freckle-face and blue-eye beauty living in early 1970's Pennyslvania surburbia. From the very start of the movie, Susie narrates (in voice-over) in a gentle voice from the grave, telling us her story of her life... and especially of her death. From her, we discover that she had a family that she loved very much... and that her family loved her back. Given a camera by her young attractive parents, "Jack and Abigail Salmon" (played by actors, Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz), Susie has dreams of becoming a wildlife photographer, but settles for shooting pictures of herself, her family and the local neighbors. She has a crush on "Ray" (played by actor, Reece Ritchie), a schoolmate she often spies on at the local shopping mall (did they even have malls back in 1973?). Ray has a crush on her as well. But their potential teenage romance is interrupted by "George Harvey" (played by actor, Stanley Tucci), the creepy reclusive neighbor who lives down the street. Mr. Harvey builds doll houses (when he clearly has no daughters of his own) and quietly keeps to himself. Nobody in the neighborhood suspects him of being a serial child killer.
From Susie's narration and later images of Mr. Harvey sketching plans for a dungeon (and then him actually digging a hole in the field for the underground structure), we pretty much figure out who the bad guy is after 20-25 minutes. As Susie walks home from school, taking a short cut through a field (the very field that Mr. Harvey has built his underground dungeon in), she runs into Mr. Harvey who looks to have been waiting for her. He tells her about a surprise he has for the neighbor kids and peeks her interest enough to lure her down there. The "clubhouse" (as he calls it) is decorated with children's toys to make it more presentable to Susie. I felt extremely uncomfortable watching the Mr. Harvey character strip off his jacket and try to perform some kind of seduction act on this child (it was just creepy and I can't stand watching these kind of scenes). After a couple of minutes, Susie can sense something is terribly wrong and tries to flee. We don't see Mr.. Harvey actually hurting Susie, but everything is insinuated in later flashback images. After Susie is missing for a few hours (well after sundown), her father, Jack, goes into panic mode and starts showing her framed photo throughout the neighborhood in hopes that somebody has seen her. The next morning, a police detective and uniformed police officers are at the Salmon's house, going through the procedures of asking questions and wondering if Susie merely just ran away (which her parents believe absolutely did not happen). When the police question creepy neighbor Mr. Harvey, nothing sends up any red flags for them to make him a suspect. He takes satisfaction in the fact that he's gotten away with his crime and mentally feeds on the euphoric memory of his recent kill.
Susie awakens to find herself in "The In-Between", the "blue light" horizon that lays between Heaven and Earth. It's a metaphysical Wonderland-type limbo where she realizes that she is no longer among the living. Susie meets "Holly" (played by actress, Nikki SooHoo), a mysterious Asian girl (her past being revealed later in the movie) who becomes her tour guide, playmate and best friend in The In-Between. Together, they have a "no-limit-to-the-imagination" adventure in their afterlife playground such as pretending to be glamorus models and sledding down mountainous ice.
Having unfinished business on Earth , Susie gazes from a beautiful sculpted gazebo (similar to one in the mall where she was supposed to meet Ray), to keep tabs on her family over the next several months, watching them suffer emotionally as they deal with her disappearance. Her mother is emotionally distant, trying in her own way to deal with the pain of losing Susie. Her father is especially taking it hard as he becomes determined and obsessed with figuring out who might've taken her.
Susie reveals from the very beginning who the killer is, leaving us with no mystery at all. The story shifts between fantasy, drama and thriller... looking like it doesn't know what it wants to be. It is more "drama", showing how a family copes with a loss of a loved one (especially one that is murdered). There are some thriller-like suspense moments as Susie's sister, "Lindsey" (played by actress, Rose Mclver), becomes Mr. Harvey's next target. Lindsey gets some weird vibes from Mr. Harvey and begins to investigate him on her own, watching his every move as she does everyday routines like jogging passed his house. But Lindsey is unaware by how much Mr. Harvey is watching her as well, making plans to make her his next victim.
The CGI -heavy visual effects that director, Peter Jackson, makes use of are just visually stunning. I smiled wide as I watched an amazing Salvador Dali-esque mindscape come to life (a giant beach ball floating in an ocean... hundreds of tree leaves turning into a flock of birds and flying away... giant sailing ships in glass bottles banging into each other in an ocean, then shattering against the rocky shoreline). The surrealistic imagery was so breathtaking and psychadelic, that if I didn't know any better, I would've thought the candy counter lady slipped some kind of mind-altering drug in my Rasberry Icee (yes, it was that trippy). Yes, the visual effects and vibrant colors are something to stare in awe at, but they seem to be just a distraction and hinder the dramatic flowing performances of the actors. I can't help but wonder what the studio was was thinking when they hired Jackson to direct. Jackson is famous for his previous directed movies, "King Kong" and "The Lord Of The Rings" trilogy, but he was just the wrong person for this one. In my opinion; directors, Darren Aronofsky or David Fincher, would've been better choices for the job. As I watched this, there were some things that I felt were left on the cutting room floor (and from what a friend told me after seeing the movie herself, alot of the material that was in the novel was omitted).
Saoirse Ronan is spectacular as she shows off her talent for showing wide range of emotions in her performance. I can see why she was nominated for her supporting role in the 2007 movie, "Atonement".
Stanley Tucci playing the overly creepy neighborhood monster, "Mr. Harvey", gives the performance of his life. Tucci, shifting his predatory eyes from side-to-side behind his large glasses and his evil crooked smile peeking from underneath of his thick mustache, makes him look all too menacing.
Susan Sarandon is the comic-relief of this cast and does a splendid job as the free-spirit, boozing grandmother who has no idea how to take care of a household (probably the only humorous scenes in the entire movie) when she decides to lend a helping hand.
Wahlberg and Weisz's performance weren't as memorable. I found their perormances only "so-so" (especially from Rachel Weisz since she was only in the movie half the time).
I'm really not into movies that focus on children being hurt. THE LOVELY BONES is a cross between "The Wizard Of Oz", "Alice In Wonderland", "Ghost", "What Dreams May Come" and "Gone, Baby Gone". The use of fog, odd angles, intense close-ups and and silhouettes gives the movie an eerie feel (which works to its advantage), but I'm afraid all those fancy camera tricks aren't enough if the ending feels like a "failure". This movie is a darkly disturbing and haunting piece of storytelling and had some potential, but there was just something missing in this movie for me to enjoy fully.
There just wasn't enough meat on this bone to keep me interested and entertained.
I give The Lovely Bones a 6 out of 10 rating.