The Lovely Bones (2009)

JOEL's VIEW ...

The movie was really scary but really good. Saoirse Ronan who played Susie Salmon, a 14-year-old girl who got murdered and raped, did an outstanding job.
Stanley Tucci got a lot of accolades and praise for his performance as
Academy Award winning director Peter Jackson (won his Oscar for Best Director in 2003 for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) did a great job with this movie.

It’s kind of weird that they have a Catholic way of heaven and hell in this movie. Susie ends up being in the “In-Between” which is kind of like purgatory in the Catholic religion.

Before she dies she has a crush on this boy in her Movie Fan Club and they plan to meet at the gazebo at the mall. Her wish to kiss him comes at the very end of the movie and they kiss and she goes on to Heaven. In the “In-Between”, she sees 6 of Harvey’s other victims.

Stanley Tucci did an outstanding job playing a mentally ill murderer.
The rest of the supporting cast is outstanding. Mark Wahlberg as the father of Saoirse Ronan’s character. Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz (Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for The Constant Gardener) as the mother, and Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon (Oscar for Best Actress for Dead Man Walking).

I recommend this to anyone who loves thrillers.

*****

LISE's VIEW ...

Do NOT expect The Lovely Bones to satisfy a yearning for a “thriller.” There’s very little suspense to this story. Actually, there’s very little PLOT to this story.

Susie Salmon is a pubescent 14-year-old, ready for her first real relationship. She’s sparkly and sweet and the kind of daughter anyone would be proud to have. Unfortunately, neighbor George Harvey wants to have her, too -- and he gets her.

We see him plan a lair for her and then watch her walk home through the cornfield, lure her into the other-worldly, candlelit underground hideaway. We don’t see him rape, kill and dismember her, but we know he killed her brutally because of all the blood.

From this early point in the movie, we watch Susie romp through a flowery, leafy heaven and narrate the coming months of her family’s lives. She watches her father struggle with anger, grief and frustration. She watches her younger sister, Lindsey, vigilantly observe neighbor Harvey and his house, almost taunting him to come for her, too.

Strangely, Lindsey is the only who suspects Harvey. That’s why Susie must keep watching the family, to inspire them to see the truth, so close to them.

We watch Susie’s odd female schoolmate become close to Susie’s almost boyfriend. And finally, we watch Susie sort of “dream” about other girls’ dead bodies Harvey has left in his wake.

At least half of the Fun in Heaven scenes seem superfluous, even boring. We get it. She’s dead and in her own version of heaven. All right already.

So much for the plot, which is as watery and wavery as some of Susie’s visions/dreams.

The performances, however, are crystalline and vivid.

Saoirse Ronan is so cute and vivacious, you just want to hug her and never let her go. Watching her walk into that creep’s trap is very hard, especially for a parent.

Mark Wahlberg, probably best known for his performance in The Departed and his rapper career, was truly riveting as Susie’s loving and tortured dad. Rose McIver as sister Lindsey is also driven as she stalks the man she thinks hurt her sister.

As Susie’s other, Rachel Weisz serves mostly as eye-candy. Nothing special there.

On the other hand, as Harvey, the meticulous dollhouse-building serial killer, Stanley Tucci is as skin-crawling a bad guy as you will ever see. He’s pitiful but not in any way pitiable. He is always alert for something evil to do, someone innocent to hurt. Director Peter Jackson, really unnecessarily, has Tucci wear contacts that make his eyes even wider and weirder. Tucci would have done wonderfully on his own.

In conclusion? The movie is worth watching just for the performances, especially Tucci’s, but don’t feel guilty if you fast-forward through some of the floaty heaven scenes.

Oh, and if you wonder where the title comes from (because it’s never revealed in the movie), it’s from the end of the book, which must be MUCH more exciting than the screen version.

‘These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it.’