The Lovely Bones

2009 garbage

Rating: 7/20

Plot: A little girl is lured into this bitchin' underground clubhouse by her creepy neighbor who plays with dolls. To use her words--it's neato. Unfortunately, her good time ends when she's murdered and stuffed into a safe. Stuck in CGI-purgatory, she wanders around watching her family and her murderer.

This starts off good enough with some Brian Eno (Airports, I think, but later we also get the exhilaratingly great "Third Uncle") but it eventually morphs into a nonsensical downer glazed in this faux-spiritual depth with poorly-defined characters and some of the worst writing you'll ever hear. "Neato." "Suzy's in the in-between." Uggh. Heaven or purgatory or whatever you want to call it is apparently nothing more than being stuck in a gazebo in th e middle of somebody's screen-saver circa 1997. And honestly, if that's what heaven looks like, I think I'd rather see what's on the other side because those colors could make an angel vomit up his unleavened bread or whatever they eat. I'm sure Peter Jackson's version of hell would have Andy Serkis in it as some demon monkey or maybe Beelzebubba himself though, so it's a tough call. Putting up with Devil Gollum or living inside a kitschy Japanese music video or a commercial for flavored water? And I don't usually do this, but I'm going to go ahead and spoil this one for you. If you haven't seen this, I don't want you to anyway. This film is more guilty at Hollywoodily tying things together than anything in recent memory. Instead of satisfying or realistic ways of ending things for these characters, it all turns into this feel-good thing that made me almost ill. I'm sorry, Peter Jackson et. al., but that's just not life. The scene where the killer gets his? Come on, Peter Jackson! Maybe that's how karma works in New Zealand, but I'm not buying it. Peter Jackson's capable of good things when he's making orcs fight or destroying zombies with lawn mowers. But when it comes to portraying real human emotion on the screen, he's just not the guy. It's actually a little troubling to me that the scenes with the cliched pervert are done very well while everything involving the family made me sigh audibly. I hated this movie.