The Lovely Bones

Genre mishmash, emotional turmoil, perfect actors, and most importantly, an unexpected spectacle. Peter Jackson has created an entirely intimate story where even the most magnificent special effects shot remains a personal desire. Plot-wise, it may suffice with the simplest premise, but the tension, tears, and magnificent camera did not even let me properly think about it. A complex and evolving experience. (06/01/2010)

Can this movie really get under someone’s skin and make them rave about it? Peter Jackson is once again great in terms of details; for example, the depiction of a chilling clash of the purest childhood innocence with the most terrible human evil (murder) is unique in its credibility. But the multi-level collage that follows the promising start of the film, and especially the final outcome of the individual plot lines, raises a single key question: “What the hell did the filmmaker want to say with this confused film?” Clarify the meaning of specific scenes and characters would actually require a dozen such questions, but I do not want to spoil this for anyone. So I ask only one harmless question: What is the meaning of Susan Sarandon’s comic character for the dramaturgical concept of this film? Or is she in the film only because the director is a fan of hers? The problem with The Lovely Bones doesn’t lie in its fantasy images (those are beautiful when they stand alone), but in its completely dysfunctional narrative vision. (23/02/2010)

In short, weird. Jackson is a good director, but the story jumps from one level to another too often and so it’s hard for the viewer to build a sufficiently strong bond with any of them. Visually exquisite and emotionally very strong scene from “purgatory" sometimes contrast weirdly with the “real world" (yes, mainly with smokey Susan Sarandon), but despite it all, Jackson manages to hold it all together. Sometimes it isn’t about what story you tell, but how you tell it. (17/04/2010)

Unfortunately, exactly the type of film in which I feel as if someone had let me read “The Watchtower" all night, necrophilic romance edition. The script of the Holy Trinity of J-W-B is a salad made up of pathetic monologues and shabby dialogues without a single hint of lightness. PJ directs some passages typically (jumps to non-event details, expressive subjective perspective, involvement of a monotonous soundtrack), while sometimes there are even fairly solid scenes (searching Pederast's barracks - although logically meaningless, he nevertheless works masterfully with tension and dual perspective). The fragmentation of the narrative perspective is so unconceptual that it prevented me from taking anything in the film seriously and, most importantly, enjoying anything. The visual stylization is quite cheap in places; in fact, it might be worth considering whether the secret of impressiveness lies only in color filters, glowing halogens and "nice objects". Particularly the trick passages are way over done, disgusting, inconsistent, flashy, without any order (even if they had only a subtle hint of the association that would give them shape). The CGI screams sexlessness, such an excessive and at the same time absolutely "backdrop" artistic solution is not seen very often. The involvement of the music is utterly catastrophic - instead of amplifying any emotion, it makes The Lovely Bones into whining emo, from which only stupid sentiment sticks out. I understand that Peter is fascinated by "being between worlds" and that not all family films can be as brilliant as Braindead... and yet the template of a pedophile killer based on Rapist Glasses? In fact, this is low end and Jackson's worst film, and it is a testament to the gradual loss of judgement and self-criticism. (08/10/2012)

Peter Jackson has lost his sense and has become a shallow megalomaniac with a tendency towards the kitsch. When it comes to the shallowness of the dialogues, Lovely Bones is like Emmerich’s 2012, and I’m not exaggerating, but in a wannabe intense drama this is a lot worse. Are we supposed to laugh with that scene about the clumsy grandma? It actually reminded me of that cringe-worthy Czech film Panská Jízda with Martin Dejdar. Is the film portraying coming to terms with the loss of a family member with dad letting himself be beaten up, mum going somewhere to the countryside to pick apples and the siblings behaving as if nothing had happened? Is Jackson taking the piss? The direction and performances are excellent, but what’s the point when every word uttered by the characters made me want to plug my ears and shake my head at how shallow and fake it sounded. When the smiling kids start walking among the cornrows, I was reminded of the terrible final scene of Knowing (but at least the plot of that one had some balls) and I just wrote off the film and decided to have fun with every incoming cliché for the rest of the runtime. PS: Anyone who dares to compare this film with The Fountain (it shares only part of the theme and Rachel Weisz), either positively (it’s just as good), or negatively (it’s just as bad), or to rate the visuals and the story better than Avatar’s is either stupid or blind. PS2: This is the same guy that made Braindead, OMG! (05/01/2010)