Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

The Lovely Bones
2009
**
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli, Saoirse Ronan

This adaptation of Alice Sebold's acclaimed novel aims to take the audience on a heartbreaking spiritual journey, but nothing about this cheesy and long-winded drama feels genuine or believable. Susie, our narrator, is a 14-year-old girl who is raped, murdered and stranded somewhere between heaven and Earth, where she observes her family deal with her death. In an oversaturated CGI limbo, she pines for the love of her life (that is, a boy who spoke to her once). Her father becomes so obsessed with solving the crime that he estranges Susie's mother, the voice of reason, who decides to abandon the family in order to pick fruit. In the meanwhile, the killer, who secretly constructed an elaborate murder room under a corn field, just seems to brood in his car. No description can do justice to how ridiculous and misjudged the story and the characters are. The spiritual link between this world and the next is the unique selling point of this metaphysical murder mystery, but it amounts to nothing.