The Lovely Bones

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. (16/04/2010)

I'm not familiar with the book, but the film The Lovely Bones strikes me as a very strange combination of several completely different films, a kind of cat and mouse that is lucky to have good actors in it. It's the most interesting spectacle ever while the main character (Saoirse Ronan and those eyes of hers!) is alive, and then whenever the unusually slimy Stanley Tucci is doing something. The scenes from the afterlife landscape seemed to me rather self-serving and it seems that Peter Jackson just needed to cram digital magic in somewhere. Completely out of place was Susan Sarandon's comical grandmother's interjection, not to mention the unbelievably stupid ending. The biggest unlucky thing about this film, though, is that it offers so many comparisons to What Dreams May Come all the time. And it simply could not come out of such a comparison well, not even if it was better. (25/10/2015)

A 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. (05/01/2010)

The cast, with my favourites Susan Sarandon and Rachel Weisz under the direction of one of the best directors of our time, and an original theme with a strong story to boot. I just had to see it! And I'm glad I did! After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson is still on a roll and The Lovely Bones really kept my eyes glued to the screen. I've known since Titanic that even if you know too much about the plot, you can still be captivated by the film. And it happened! Stanley Tucci is as sleazy and convincing a pedophile as Jackie Jackie Earle Haley in Little Children. Susan Sarandon delighted me as the energetic and distracted grandmother, and Rachel Weisz's performance did too. And Saoirse Ronan is one of the most talented child stars for me after this film. Jackson blends dark thriller and family drama with imaginative fantasy to great effect, and the result is a unique film of high quality. As far as the technical execution is concerned, they have done it perfectly – a complete audiovisual orgy. In short, a real cinematic experience that got me both with its story and its execution. (21/07/2010)

Too long, very uninteresting in places, full of images that might have looked better in a photograph. At times it felt like two or three films mixed together. The only thing that worked for me in this film was the music, it was perfectly able to complement the images the film wanted to show me. The pictures could be pretty, but they don't work as a 135-minute film. It can be moving, but so can any movie where someone's daughter is murdered, where the deceased talks about their departure, that final one. Maybe I was expecting too much, something more different, something more suspenseful, something with a better story; this one didn't move along very well, plus the ending didn't add much (was the filmmaker just trying to say "The mills of the gods grind slowly"?). A better 2 stars. (28/06/2010)