As we learn on the opening page of “The Lovely Bones,” the narrator is a 14-year-old girl who has recently been murdered. This provides an unusual perspective for the telling of her life story …and its aftermath.
A movie made from Alice Sebold’s big best-seller must deal with this tricky device. For instance, the filmmaker will have to conjure up the narrator’s world, which isn’t quite heaven, but is clearly a projection of an adolescent girl’s imagination.
Who better for the job than Peter Jackson, right? Not only because his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy proved his ability to visualize a complex world, but because his early film, “Heavenly Creatures,” was an extraordinary act of empathy with teenage girls — albeit disturbed ones.
Jackson had the right qualifications for the job, but something went awry in his approach to “The Lovely Bones.” This is a strangely unsatisfying movie that seems uncertain about which direction to take.
It has, however, one superb element: the central performance, by Saoirse Ronan (the Oscar-nominated kid from “Atonement”). She plays Susie Salmon, the girl who calmly tells us about her horrifying murder at the hands of a neighborhood sicko.
He is played (this is not a whodunit) by Stanley Tucci, who does strong work in a creepy role. Susie’s grief-stricken parents are played by Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz, her obnoxious grandma by Susan Sarandon.
Rolling out in a somewhat shapeless flashback, “The Lovely Bones” begins to arrange itself as a conventional serial-killer thriller: Wahlberg’s frustrated father looks as though he’s going to assume the mantle of action hero. That approach, while unappetizing, might have worked, but Jackson doesn’t commit entirely to it.
We also spend plenty of time with Susie in her candy-colored wonderland, a place that mostly recalls the forgotten Robin Williams vehicle “What Dreams May Come.” It certainly is eye-filling and you get the sneaking suspicion that creating these kinds of visions is what drew Peter Jackson to the project.
But flights of fancy shouldn’t feel heavy handed, and these do. Then a half-hour from the end of the movie, we shift our focus to Susie’s sister (Rose McIver), as she turns into a sleuth herself — a left-field development in the story.
There are other characters whose stories suggest a significance that never blossoms. We don’t spend enough time with the parents and their battered marriage to feel much about that relationship, either.
Saoirse Ronan is one of those weirdly gifted young performers unable to make a false move. As Jackson proved with Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey in “Heavenly Creatures,” he has the ability to draw exceptional work from young actresses and he certainly does it again here.
But the film doesn’t work. It tries to be both a tawdry thriller and an exercise in style, and neither approach is worthy of what is, at the core of it all, a terribly sad story about a young life snuffed out.
“The Lovely Bones” two stars
Peter Jackson directs the adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best-seller, a strange concoction in which a 14-year-old girl (excellent Saoirse Ronan) narrates the story of her own murder and her existence in the afterlife. Jackson fills the screen with his visual imagination, but the film boils down to a rather tawdry serial-killer thriller — and isn’t really very good even on that level.
Rated: PG-13 for violence, subject matter
Showing: Alderwood, Cinebarre Mountlake Terrace, Everett, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Meridian, Metro, Oak Tree
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
