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The Lovely Bones is Patch Adams. That’s what it is. It’s an aging comedian who wants to be taken seriously, and so he ends up playing to all of his weaknesses and none of his strengths. Admittedly, after the LOTR trilogy and Kign Kong, I can see how you’d run out of dream projects, but I have no idea what drew Peter Jackson to this project. If it was just the heaven visuals, surely he could’ve found a stronger story to go with it. After all, if your story is about a dead girl in heaven watching over her family, you should be able to make those seem like the same movie, right? Instead, there’s this horrid, instructive narration by Saorie Ronan that sounds more Jedi Master than teenage girl and usually just gives us the Cliff Notes of the movie as we’re fucking watching it. You see, Susie can’t influence the living (except when she does), so her plight is just student film irony. Her body gets dumped while she has her first kiss and so forth. I hear that the book was more squicky, sexual, and dark, but by drowning the story in tastefulness, Jackson replaces the point with “lol afterlife.”

There is one point where the movie comes alive. Underneath all the Oscars, Jackson is still a genre director, and although he may not know how to convey grief without slow-motion and Enya music, good god can he do horror. Anytime Stanley Tucci is on screen, he pretty much picks up a steel chair and beats the suck out of the movie. He has a warmth right out of the uncanny valley, a manner like a kids’ TV show host who hates his job, and everything he does is shot and scored like it’s the most vile, obscene thing anyone has ever done. Just to taunt you with the knowledge that Goodmovie!Jackson isn’t dead, he’s just resting. Unfortunately, the movie has no idea what to do with him. It takes a few wildly watchable stabs into thriller territory (“Oh, right, Jackson can direct.”) before limping along without confrontation or tension until he’s done in by a magic icicle. No one ever asks why the Icicle Mafia couldn’t take him out before he raped and murdered several girls, as this would make for an interesting movie.

So, if you absolutely have to watch a movie about a murder victim whose ghost observes both killer and loved one, rent Ghost.

Date: 2010-02-09 02:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tgirl78.livejournal.com
I wasn't sure if I was going to see this movie or not. I thought that maybe I would get a little too emotional over it, but your review just confirmed what I kinda thought it would be anyway. I might check it out when it comes out on Netflix.

I love me some Ghost! I think I'll watch that later on tonight. Tee hee!

Date: 2010-02-10 12:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] iteari.livejournal.com
It really lacked a story structure. It was pretty restless to sit there for three goddamn hours. I'd rent it for the pretty, otherwise it was a lackluster film.

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