MOVIE: THE LOVELY BONES

With his seminal Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson not only managed to tame Tolkien’s source material, but to vastly improve upon it. Sadly, the auteur’s latest adaptation of a literary work is an underwhelming affair. Based on Alice Sebold’s beautifully macabre novel, The Lovely Bones tells the story of Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), a 14-year-old girl who watches from Heaven as her grief-stricken family struggles to mend itself in the wake of her brutal murder at the hands of her reclusive neighbour (Stanley Tucci). Jackson once again invests his visuals with great beauty and whimsy. Unfortunately, Susie’s perfunctory narrative track, which is littered with hackneyed spiritualism, prevents the audience from truly understanding her family’s turmoil, let alone the magnitude of her death. The cast, which includes Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon, is given very little to work with, but Ronan offers naïve charm, while an unrecognisable Tucci is alarmingly effective as the eerie and sinister neighbour. The Lovely Bones is a slight but visually gorgeous film that never quite provides the cathartic experience one might have hoped for. (JH)