Haunting, beautiful 'The Lovely Bones' needs more heart
Peter Jackson's beautiful and scary fantasy "The Lovely Bones" resonated with me on a personal level that most people won't quite understand.
It's narrated by a 14-year-old girl who has been presumably raped, then murdered by a man she meets while on the way home from school in 1973. Her body is never found.
As a crime reporter, I covered the case of Barbara Glueckert, a 14-year-old Mount Prospect girl who had been presumably raped, then murdered by a man she met while on the way home from school in 1976. Her body has never been found.
If there was ever an audience for whom "The Lovely Bones" would easily connect, it would be people involved in that case. People like me.
And yet, so much of the emotional essence of "The Lovely Bones" has been crushed under an avalanche of spectacular, Salvador Dali-esque visions of the afterlife that the movie seduced my eye, but lost my heart.
Jackson, coming off the special effects epics "King Kong" and the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, is infatuated with the wrong things in this movie, mainly, the wondrous visions of the "in-between" where murdered girls congregate in dreamlike landscapes decorated by colorful images and symbols that have no meaning for us. Not yet.
Especially problematic is the terrifying scene when a teen girl is being chased by the killer. She runs into her house. But instead of blurting out, "Mom! Dad! The man who killed my sister is right behind me!," she stops dead in her tracks to let her estranged parents enjoy a tender reunion.
What?
Wait! I'm getting ahead of the story.
At the beginning, the voice of Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) utters her chilling words, "I was 14 when I was murdered."
We learn early on that her creepy neighbor, Mr. Harvey, has killed her in a horribly violent and bloody manner.
Sporting a bald spot, friendly mustache, big eyeglasses and an avuncular voice, a nearly unrecognizable Stanley Tucci plays Harvey with such deceptive, homey charm, it's easy to see why young girls wouldn't think of him as a stranger danger.
His transition from a respected community leader to a dark, sick man is a virtuosity piece of acting. As Tucci lets the evil overtake him in sinister, incremental bites, he easily creates the most frightful and heinous movie serial killer since Hannibal Lecter.
Before that happens, Susie's narration recounts her time on earth as a happy daughter of Jack and Abigail (a tentative Mark Wahlberg and superb Rachel Weisz) in a quaint Pennsylvania suburb.
Susie has a thing for the handsome Ray Singh (Reece Ritchie), and her dreams are answered when he asks her to meet him Saturday at the gazebo. She never makes it.
Armed with silver-dollar eyes, Ronan, the star of the excellent drama "Atonement," oozes with adolescent vulnerability and naiveté. Michael Imperioli makes what he can out of his thankless role of the cop on the case.
Susan Sarandon supplies strained comic relief as Susie's granny, a hard-drinking, smokestack of a woman made for nothing domestic. Rose McIver plays Susie's little sister, who grows up to do things Susie can't, and draws attention from a certain neighbor.
Is "The Lovely Bones" about a father's love being so powerful it prevents Susie from crossing into heaven? About Susie not being able to enter the pearly gates until she gets her first kiss? About an inscrutable, tardy God?
It's about all of those, and yet, none in particular.
"The Lovely Bones," based on Alice Sebold's novel, is a muddled spiritual drama that affirms the existence of a moral power willing to deal harsh justice to evildoers.
But why does the power wait so long and allow the evildoer to kill more children and destroy more families?
Apparently, this moral, celestial entity has never heard the phrase "Justice delayed is justice denied."
<p class="factboxheadblack">'The Lovely Bones'</p>
<p class="News">Two and a half stars</p>
<p class="News"><b>Starring:</b> Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, Rachel Weisz</p>
<p class="News"><b>Directed by:</b> Peter Jackson</p>
<p class="News"><b>Other:</b> A Paramount Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for language, violence. 136 minutes</p>
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