Review of The Lovely Bones (2009) by Christina G — 04 Dec 2011

Stanley Tucci, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon are all brilliant thespians but you wouldn't know it by their performances in this movie. I have no idead what Peter Jackson was thinking. Mark Wahlberg is not a great actor, he's just been lucky enough to get some great roles.

I didn't feel an ounce of sincere pain in his grieving father's character and it was horribly overplayed. I can forgive that though because as I said he isn't a great actor to start with. Twenty years from now nobody is going to hail Mark Wahlberg as one of the greatest actors of our generation.

Susan Sarandon is one of our greatest actresses, Stanley Tucci is one of the most respected purveyors of his craft and Rachel Weisz has every thing she needs to be held in the same sort of esteem as Sarandon and Tucci as she progresses in her career, but the performances Jackson pulls out of them here are cartoonish at best.

This overall sort of mediocrity in their performances adds an air of mediocrity to the film as a whole. The scenes in the "in-between" world that Susie inhabits also do very little to enhance the overall quality of the film.

They often seem a bit silly and pointless and at times seem like they're only thrown in solely for effect rather than to actually advance the plot or improve the film. The writing also is a bit ridiculous at times.

I'm not certain how the scenes play out in the book since I haven't read it, but the most aggravating scene and yes I actually became furious because I thought it was just ridiculous was the scene where George is about to throw Susie's body in the sinkhole and she comes back and inhabits Carolyn Dando's character Ruth.

At this point as we're all incredibly excited that George Harvey is going to get what he deserves for the multiple women he has murdered we find out that isn't why Susie came back, she came back for a kiss, she crossed over from the other side, inhabited someone's body for a kiss with a boy she had only just met eleven months earlier, but the serial killer who has murdered multiple women and is about to dispose of her body and get away with her murder, leave town, go off and murder other women who she could prevent from dying by using her time that she crossed back over on this side to stop him then get her kiss, yes you moronic Mr.

Jackson you could have done both, but you Hollywood types never seem to see the obvious. No instead she crosses back over for a kiss that lasts a few seconds but lets a serial killer go free. Then if you didn't make an idiotic enough choice with that plot device Mr.

Jackson you think you made it alright when a "spiritually" directed icicle lands on George's shoulder and forces him to fall down a cliff while he's trying to lure another victim. So you with what seems to be an apparently pea sized brain think that you have levelled the playing field by having him fall down a cliff that took less than ten seconds and it's all over.

He barely even suffers it's over so fast. He gets off that easy and you think you made it okay. You're lucky the Lord Of The Rings books were brilliantly written by J.R.R. Tolkien, because clearly you're a fool and the brilliant films you created out of those scripts were a fluke.

Hollywood changes scripts all the time to make more sense out of them, so as I said, I haven't read the books, but if this how things ended in the books and you didn't have the foresight to change it, then I reiterate, you're a fool Mr.

Jackson. Don't give me that people go unpunished for crimes that they commit in reality all the time garbage either, I know that, it's reality, but that's not what movies are meant for. If we want reality we live in it Einstein.

Films are where the bad guys are supposed to get what they deserve. He's supposed to live, suffer and pay for his crimes. The families of his victims are supposed to know he's paying for them and get a sense of justice.

He's not supposed to die without them getting the satisfaction of knowing he paid for his crimes and let's face it, everybody dies so death isn't a punishment. Living and suffering with your crimes and the consequences, that is paying.

Mr. Jackson you took what could have been a great film and populated it with mediocre performances, disjointed storytelling and inane plot choices. In this particular film, you suck and so did your film.