The Lovely Bones and The Book of Eli
I reviewed The Book of Eli (and gave my thoughts on the burgeoning January B Movie Boomlet) over at the Weekly Standard, so you can check that out there. The only other major flick out this weekend is The Lovely Bones, Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s bestselling novel about the aftermath of a rape/murder of a 14-year-old girl and the havoc it wreaks on her family.
I don’t have anything terribly brilliant to say about The Lovely Bones; it’s not particularly good (pulling in 34% on Rotten Tomatoes), and the tonal shifts between family melodrama, looks at “heaven,” and straight-up horror are jarring, at best. Stanley Tucci is fantastic as the killer — he plays the role with a nerdy menace that seems just right, and might earn him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor — but the rest of the cast isn’t terribly memorable. The special effects sequences are up to Jackson’s considerable talents, but seem out of place in a story that is as personal as this one.
The moment that drove home just how odd this film is, however, comes near the end…there’s a relatively heavy spoiler coming, so I’ll put it below the jump.
As the story progresses, the murdered girl’s family has splintered: The mother is working at a winery in California because she couldn’t handle the stress; the sister has grown distant from their father, who himself has become obsessed with tracking down the killer. In the book, this evolution is played perfectly — after the dad has a heart attack the mother returns home for a few days, but the children are none too pleased to see her. The little boy even snarls “Fuck you” when she tries to comfort him. It’s pretty shocking — but utterly believable — stuff.
In the movie, however, Jackson elides this family difficulty. Yes, the mother goes to California (where she serves as a noble migrant worker, or some such), while the father is having troubles at work. But the oddest moment occurs when the family reunites: The sister has just broken into Tucci’s house, stealing evidence that clearly implicates him in the death of her big sis. Running home, she bursts through the door, starts to say what she has and stops cold in the middle of the room: Mom has returned! They share a tender family moment — a nice hug, everything’s forgiven — and it looks for a moment as if the sister is going to hold onto the evidence so as not to reintroduce the specter of death into their family’s life.
That description may not make the scene sound all that terrible, but trust me: It is, shall we say, absurd. I mean, it is just a jaw-droppingly dumb moment. When I watched the movie I wondered if that moment was in the book (I hadn’t yet read Sebold’s novel; it isn’t) or if Jackson had merely screwed it up that enormously (he had). It literally provoked guffaws from myself and at least one of my fellow critics. It’s such an untrue moment that it’s hard to imagine Jackson inserting it into the proceedings. But here we are.
Anyway, The Lovely Bones never quite works because all the little moments feel wrong and fake, and all the giant special effects distract from what should have been a relatively intimate story. It’s too bad.