Movie Reviews: "The Lovely Bones" *Bad Reviews Delay Wide Release Until Jan.*

[JamesG]

Movie Reviews: The Lovely Bones

Once long ago, cinema and literary pundits blithely pontificated that Tolkien’s massive The Lord of the Rings novels could never be transformed into a movie.

And then Peter Jackson came along and did it.

Now he’s tried his hand at turning Alice Sebold’s 2002 novel The Lovely Bones into a movie.


Critics almost unanimously agreed that the novel is unfilmable — and Jackson’s effort, they aver, is proof of that opinion.

It’s told from the perspective of a 14-year-old girl who exists in the Inbetween world that divides life from heaven after being brutally murdered.


“But a device that works on the page comes off artificial and emotionless on-screen,” comments Claudia Puig in USA Today.

Not that Jackson hasn’t thrown everything his Weta special-effects house could produce at it.


“The result is dumbfounding and ludicrous in equal measure,” Joe Morgenstern remarks in the Wall Street Journal.

Puig in USA Today says that it veers “from lightheartedness to heavy-handedness.”

Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News says that Jackson is “either too cutesy or licking his chops over the lurking dread.”

Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times concludes that the movie is “more hit-and-miss than unblemished triumph.”


Several critics compare the Inbetween world that Jackson has created with rock album covers of the 1970s.

“Whew. Color me relieved,” writes Kyle Smith in the New York Post. “There is no need to fear death, even the most horrifying kind of murder. Because the afterlife is exactly like the album cover for a 1970s progressive-rock band.”

A.O. Scott in the New York Times remarks that the movie amounts to “a mid-’70s art-rock album cover brought to life.”

But fancy covers alone never sold many albums and the striking visuals Weta has produced for The Lovely Bones have fallen short of lifting the screenplay, critics suggest.

“The spectacle Jackson creates is showmanship, not storytelling,” Associated Press writer David Germain concludes.

-IMDB News

[Schmoopie]

I didn't like the book much at all and the only reason I'd want to see the movie is to see how they would adapt it on screen. Even when I was reading the book I couldn't imagine a movie being made of it.

[JamesG]

Paramount Delays Roll Out Of The Lovely Bones

Saddled by generally poor reviews and equally poor word of mouth among adults who have seen it, Paramount has canceled plans to expand Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones on Friday and will instead do so on January 15 to give its marketing staff time to ramp up a new advertising and publicity campaign focusing on the one group that has reacted positively to it -- young females, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Thursday).


The film is currently playing in just three theaters in Los Angeles and New York, where it has collected just $218,774 after 12 days.

The Times noted that Paramount is revising its marketing campaign based on tracking surveys and test screenings showing that 13-to-20-year-old girls have a strong interest in seeing the movie, which centers on a teenager living in the Inbetween (a realm between Earth and heaven) after she is brutally raped and murdered by a man living in her neighborhood.

-IMDB News