moviereview colin fraser film movie australia review critic flicks the lovely bones
That a poster for Lord of the Rings appears in a bookstore window indicates that the mythical is not far from director Peter Jackson's mind. This corduroy-beige world of small town America can't compare to an abundant Middle Earth, yet the fantastical remains centre present what with an impish girl, an evil villain and a courageous father forced to brazen acts. Add a beautifully surreal world lurking just beyond our own and you get the picture. Alice Sebold's best-seller scores it's dominant theme in the opening break when a young girl, upset by a penguin living in a snow globe, is comforted by her father. “He's trapped in a perfect world,” he says. And thus the story unfolds.
Susie Salmon (Ronan in winning form) lives a happy life with a happy family. However she narrates her story from beyond the grave, drawing us inexorably to the fateful day when a comb-over neighbour (a queasily menacing Stanely Tucci) wins his prize. Suddenly she's in the in-between life, a kind of holding pattern of stunning surrealism for those who 'keep looking back' and not toward the white light. Accordingly, life doesn't go on to the detriment of her father who doggedly irritates police with thin suspicions about the killer, and her mother who cracks under the strain. Enter Susan Sarandon's gin-soaked, Mrs Robinson of a grandmother to inject comic levity while Susie looks on.
There is a lot to like about the film, many moments of subtle parallels, impressionistic story-telling, Andrew Lesnie's luscious cinematography, heart-wrenching love and the killer's test-screen tweaked departure. But these are not enough to hold the film together. Saoirse Ronan is such a formidable presence, and such an anchor in the film, that Jackson struggles to balance the gap left by her character's death. As the story gains a rhythmic wobble from which it never quite recovers, Tucci, Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz do commendable work but it's uphill against Ronan, the CGI department and Jackson's unwillingness to end his films. It's a game try, but The Lovely Bones never quite makes the jump from thoroughly watchable to completely unmissable.
// COLIN FRASER
moviereview colin fraser film movie australia review critic flicks the lovely bones