Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Lovely Bones Film Review

The Lovely Bones is a story about a murder victim watching her family deal with the loss of her from their lives. Susie Salmon, the victim, watched as her family struggled to overcome the loss and fought to try and catch the murderer before he devastated another family. Susie was stuck between heaven and earth, unable to let go of her past and move on with her death. Peter Jackson, the movie director, overall did a good job to include quotes and scenes, they weren’t directed as good as they could have been though. The movie was a very different image than what I pictured while reading the book. The heaven was more cartoony than expected and Mr. Harvey’s death was portrayed very badly. I thought that the characters in the movie were a good match for the characters description in the book. The Lovely Bones movie had similar plot events as in the novel, just with a different sequence in how they took place, which made it worse than the book.

While reading the novel, the events that Alice Sebold painted in the reader’s mind were different from the way that the movie was directed. For example, Susie’s heaven was very “Disney” like, very animated. This was a downturn from the heaven that Sebold tried to create in the novel. Another example of a different image in the movie was Mr. Harvey’s death. In the book, he was knocked over by an icicle and then he fell over into a ravine. Although it was the same event in the movie, it was just poorly displayed. In the movie, there were many events that were similar to the novel, just portrayed differently than how Sebold told it in the book.

Peter Jackson did a good job in matching up the characters from the novel with the actors that he chose to fill the different roles. Mr. Harvey and Jack Salmon were both matched up perfectly. Mr. Harvey was the perfect man for the job, creepy and suspicious look to him, and Mr. Salmon was the perfect paranoid father after his daughter was murdered. I didn’t like how Susie looked super young in the movie while all her friends looked 5 year older than her, but in the novel they seemed to be the same age. Grandma Lynn was the perfect match to the novel, just very young for a Grandma. The characters were the best part of the movie, they were matched up very well.

The plot events in the movie were taken nicely from the book, especially important quotes. It was nice how Susie was talking in the background of the movie, just like in the novel, while using nice quotes in her lines. The author could have done a better job to use more suspenseful events from the novel, such as when Lindsey Salmon broke into Mr. Harvey’s house to look for evidence, or when Mr. Salmon got beaten up after running into the cornfield after Mr. Harvey. A bad example that Jackson used of plot in his movie was when he mixed up the events around Abigail Salmon leaving home and returning after he got beat up, when it was completely different in the novel. Overall, Peter Jackson did a good job of using suspenseful events from the novel in his movie, just a poor way of showing them.

The Lovely Bones movie was a bit of a letdown from what the movie could have been like. Some of the bad aspects of the film were the images that Alice Sebold created in the novel were very different from the images that Peter Jackson showed in his movie, as well as the plot events were mixed up from the novel and they weren’t very well directed compared to how well they could have been. Although not all parts of the film were bad, such as the Characters that were chosen, and certain events from the novel such as Lindsey’s break into Mr. Harvey‘s house. The movie could have been less imaginary and more realistic at parts. If you hadn’t read the book before, you might enjoy the movie, but if you read the book before watching the movie, be prepared for a surprise.

I would give the movie a 6/10