The Lovely Bones...

Normally I don't blog much about movies I've seen, but this one warranted it. I saw The Lovely Bones based on Alice Sebold's beautiful novel. The novel was one of my favorite books. It invoked many feelings in me and I found myself in the book sharing the feelings of Susie's family. I felt hatred, sadness, anger, outrage, pain, longing and so many other feelings as the family, along with susie, worked toward finding the "skeevy" neighbour who heinously drained her body of it's joyful life.

The movie was quite another affair. Peter Jackson took the helm, and left the story without much of the deep feeling I describe about the novel. He has a brilliant mind in terms of otherworldly realms and fantastic story lines, however that mind was not made for THIS story. He spent too much time on his version of "the in between" where Susie has transitioned to soon after her murder. Granted, this visualization brought by Jackson is surreal and quite breathtaking, even perhaps a bit thought prevoking but leans towards confusing. It caused irreparable damage to the subtle nuances the story has. With him in charge the human element is nearly drained from the story line. The only thing that gave this film any weight at all was the beautiful selection of actors chosen to create this cast. They were almost perfect in my mind. For me Stanley Tucci was non existent and all I could see and feel was the creep factor his brilliance loaned to his character ( murderer, George Harvey).

My final comment is that while George Harvey may have slowly and painfully sucked the joie de vivre out of Susie Salmon, Peter Jackson did brought the same tragic fate to the story and subsequently this moive.