Visually suffocating.
Comment
12/14/09
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The Lovely Bones (2009)
28
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:18
Fresh:5
Rotten:13
Average Rating:4.5/10
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: PG-13 [See Full Rating]
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Dec 11, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $276,000
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
1 - 18 (sorted by date)
Top CriticWith his garish, pointless and downright inept rendering of Alice Sebold's 2002 novel, The Lovely Bones, Peter Jackson has hit a new low in the annals of movie adaptations.
12/11/09
Top CriticA victim obsessed with the lives that go on without her is at the center of The Lovely Bones.
12/11/09
Top CriticColor me relieved. There is no need to fear death, even the most horrifying kind of murder. Because the afterlife is exactly like the album cover for a 1970s progressive-rock band.
12/11/09
Top CriticThe novel never flinched, the movie does. But Jackson, who builds jolting suspense when Susie's sister enters the killer's lair, is drawn to a spiritual dimension.
12/11/09
Top CriticThe result is dumbfounding and ludicrous in equal measure, a too-muchness that makes the excesses of What Dreams May Come seem downright spartan.
12/11/09
Top CriticJackson is too enamored with the idea of mixing heaven and the heebie-jeebies, so he's made the skeevy equivalent of a Mitch Albom book with some pulp fiction pressed between its covers.
12/11/09
Top CriticEverything that's good is undermined by an overemphasis on one part of the story that is essential but has been allowed to overflow its boundaries.
12/11/09
Top CriticThe movie strikes clashing tones, veering from lightheartedness to heavy-handedness.
12/10/09
Top CriticIn Jackson's simplified, sweetened, and CGI-besotted telling, The Lovely Bones is a sad-but-hopeful, dramatic-but-gentle fairy tale intentionally made less upsetting for teens.
12/09/09
Top CriticJackson crafts lovely but ineffectual dreamscapes of the afterlife that eviscerate much of the human side of the story.
12/09/09
Top CriticPart Disney's Alice in Wonderland, part Fritz Lang's M, the movie is horrific yet cloying, alternately distended and abrupt, sometimes poignant and often ridiculous.
12/08/09
Top CriticThe New Zealand director’s trademark recipe of fantasy, realism and computerized visual effects turns The Lovely Bones into a thrilling adventure.
12/08/09
Top CriticThe Lovely Bones has been fashioned as a holiday family movie about murder and grief; it’s a thoroughly queasy experience.
12/07/09
Top CriticHow do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it.
12/04/09
Top CriticThe film certainly plays well enough as a melodrama-cum-revenge thriller.
11/24/09
Top CriticJackson undermines solid work from a good cast with show-offy celestial evocations that severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters.
11/24/09
Top CriticWhen else has the obscenity of child murder been the cause of such gravity and grace?
11/24/09
Top Critic1 - 18 (sorted by date)
Latest News for The Lovely Bones
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...
December 21, 2009:
Five Favorite Films With Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson has come a long way since his 1987 debut Bad Taste, a shoestring-budget splatter film shot in his native New Zealand that went on to earn a cult following. Yet... More...
December 10, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Princess, Invictus Are Certified Fresh
This week at the movies, we've got a Southern-fried fairy tale (The Princess and the Frog, with voice work from Anika Noni Rose and Keith David) and inspiration through rugby... More...
December 06, 2009:
The Lovely Bones in the running for Best Film 2009, for most passionately opposing violence against women.
More...
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