The Lovely Bones

If there’s nothing happening, not even a death can change things (screenplay) and less often means more (special effects). The images we see are often beautiful, but also absolutely empty of emotion. It would never have occurred to me that Peter Jackson would end up suffering from the syndrome that accompanies the works of Tarsem Singh. But in the first half-hour it has everything it needs, including emotions, which are so important for movies like this. But this just makes the rest of the movie that much more painful, because this outstanding “prolog" just proves that the movie could have been different. For instance, more in terms of hints instead of spectacular CGI landscapes. (03/01/2010)

Lynne Ramsay was originally supposed to adapt the novel into a movie before the soft cuties Spielberg and Jackson took it away from her and made it into a bouncy castle that made the novel’s author herself want to puke. Esoteric vegan lemonade for parents who need to cope with the loss of their offspring by imagining that they're in a better place now, all of it seasoned with the greatest stereotypes and clichés in the character of Stanley Tucci. As goofy as the film is, I'm all the more annoyed at how it drowns out some masterful visual ideas (no, I don't mean the ones in the heavenly veil, but the dollhouse tour, for example) or entire sequences (the creaky floorboard in the pedophile's house). Jackson is slowly becoming the kind of director here who even adds leaves to the sidewalk digitally, and that's not a good way to go. (29/06/2020)

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)

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)

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)