Martyn Drake's Blog

Oh Peter Jackson, what went wrong?!

HERE BE SPOILERS. If you don’t want to know what happens at the end of the film, LOOK AWAY NOW!

We went to see The Lovely Bones last Saturday and was looking forward to seeing what magic Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens weaved into the screenplay based on Alice Seabold’s bestselling book. Perhaps part of me was expecting another Heavenly Creatures, but what we actually got was a dreadful, uninteresting and altogether mediocre film in which not much really happens to the extent you don’t give a Gollum about the outcome.

I like Peter Jackson’s work. I really do. I’ve loved virtually everything he’s produced – from Bad Taste, Brain Dead, Meet the Feebles, the Lord of the Rings, King Kong. Heck, for King Kong I travelled over to New York to the worldwide premiere. It was the most expensive cinema visit of my life. So I was most surprised to dislike The Lovely Bones as much as I did.

The problem is not so much the actors. Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon is on top form. As is Mark Wahlberg as her dad. Susan Saradon as Grandma Lyn gets the performance spot on. Although Stanley Tucci as the murderer/rapist, George Harvey, was a bit too creepy and was really the the stereotypical pervert (and bizzarely enough reminded me of Hugh Dennis’ Mr. Strange – aka Milky Milky man).

The real problem stems from the screenplay which is tired, flat, and generally void of any warmth at all. Even when Harvey’s killing spree is revealed, you don’t want to start screaming things at the screen. And the real purpose of the story – how the family copes once their daughter has gone, just doesn’t stir up any emotion at all. It was tedious and was about as emotional as finding you’ve just finished your Cornetto.

And speaking of Susie, her little corner of heaven clearly comes gift-wrapped direct from MTV. The visual effects are uninteresting, synthetic; a poor show from a company that’s won multiple Oscars and industry awards for their work. Harvey’s death in the book is silly enough (and the overall story – not the fault of the screenwriters I might add – makes the police look like incompetent arseholes), but in the film it’s grossly unnecessary. While I can happily watch people’s brains exloding in things like Bad Taste, watching a digital double fall down the mountain and hit branches and rocks on the way down is not good. We get the idea that he dies as soon as he falls off the side of the cliff (I mean the guy stands right by the edge for no reason at all and a bloody icicle causes him to lose his balance!). The ending requires the audience have a leap of faith in divine intervention, but all it succeeds in doing is in generating a fantasy beyond anything that J.R.R. Tolkien could devise!

All in all the Lovely Bones isn’t Lovely at all. It’s a horrible adaptation of a rather good (but also flawed) book. And this is from a trio who really know how to adapt books into films (although a part of me wishes they’d go back to making up stories from scratch again other than capitialising on other people’s work).