An entertaining but strange hybrid -- part murder mystery, part gooey teen romance/coming of age story, part philosophy lesson, part family drama
Comment
02/08/10
Rate this Movie 
The Lovely Bones (2009)
36
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:177
Fresh:64
Rotten:113
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: It's stuffed full of Peter Jackson's typically dazzling imagery, but The Lovely Bones suffers from abrupt shifts between horrific violence and cloying sentimentality.
Rated: Rating Pending
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Dec 11, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $41,485,830
Synopsis: Oscar winner Peter Jackson directs this adaptation of Alice Sebold's beloved novel THE LOVELY BONES. After she is killed, young Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan, ATONEMENT) looks down from heaven on... [More]
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Saoirse Ronan
Director: Peter Jackson
Reviews for The Lovely Bones
very much a film of mood where emotions run deep and devastating, and those emotions are the most potent special effect in a work that is sometimes a bit top heavy with them
02/07/10
Alice Sebold's evocative best seller proves to be more unfilmable than Tolkien's sprawling fantasy trilogy - a disappointment, yet it's impossible for anyone to do it better
02/05/10
Despite its visually remarkable attempts to engage the film is an utter loss.
02/02/10
"Somehow the depth of the novel has become nothing more than an exercise in producing a polished, beautiful-looking fantasy."
02/02/10
The sum of the parts of this film while tantalizing and worth a watch, leave the viewer, like its lead character, lacking closure.
02/01/10
The story is just told very poorly... what is this movie? A thriller? A ghost story? A police procedural? A tearjerker? It's all of those and none of them.
01/31/10
The Lovely Bones demeure un film aux idées intrigantes et aux intentions fort honorables, mais dont l'exécution s'avère trop souvent déficiente.
01/29/10
Thematically muddled, the film nevertheless has a strong sense of visual presence and features a handful of strong performances.
01/28/10
Learning to live beyond grief is the heart of the story and the performances bring out that premise beautifully.
01/27/10
An okay movie hampered by Wahlberg's sleepy performance and Sarnadon's visit from another planet
01/24/10
It is hard to know what Jackson was intending to do with this film. Instead of telling the earth-story he seems to have wanted to give us some indelible images of heaven
01/23/10
[The film] remains a mystery -- not a mystery as in who committed the crime, but a mystery in its intended theme and why that theme didn't unite the film at all.
01/20/10
It's a great deal of effort by a lot of talented people that results in two-plus hours of tepid clockwork blandness.
01/20/10
while it has moments that soar both visually and emotionally, it ultimately feels torn and unwieldy
01/19/10
The cinematic equivalent of that big farm your childhood dog allegedly went to.
01/18/10
Lush cinematography combined with first-rate acting and a valuable story make this a great film for the whole family.
01/18/10
... often visually striking but emotionally baffling, and ultimately seems stuck in the same sort of purgatory as its young heroine.
01/16/10
Jackson and his usual screenwriting collaborators...have simplified and amplified Sebold's text, turning it from a meditation on the interior politics of family into a supernatural revenge story.
01/16/10
Because Peter Jackson is willing to wrestle with challenging material, it's easy to forgive him if he doesn't create additional masterpieces every time he steps behind the camera.
01/15/10
Latest News for The Lovely Bones
January 14, 2010:
Critics Consensus: The Book of Eli Is a So-So Read
This week at the movies, we've got Biblical bloodshed (The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman); neighborhood intrigue (The Spy Next Door, starring Jackie... More...
January 11, 2010:
Susan Sarandon: The RT Interview
Oscar winner Susan Sarandon is one of Hollywood's finest actresses. In Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, she plays boozy, straight-talking Grandma Lynn, who brings some... More...
January 07, 2010:
Saoirse Ronan, Teenage Assassin 
"Lovely Bones" star Saoirse Ronan is in negotiations to star in Joe Wright's "Hanna," the tale of a teenage assassin. More...
December 24, 2009:
Paramount Hides Its Lovely Bones Until January
Hoping to see Peter Jackson's adaptation of "The Lovely Bones" this Christmas? You'll have to wait until mid-January, now that Paramount has bumped the film, which has been... More...
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