The Lovely Bones: Final poster and early reviews

Source: MySpace (via FirstShowing)

Harry Knowles’ rhapsody on a theme of “lovely” caused some stir yesterday because it was the first known review of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, a film that has been seen but for which a review embargo was in place. Today finally a couple of reviews have  arrived from the UK by people who are more than sub-literate. I’m sure Harry is a nice fellow, but his childlike grasp of his native language is a little bewildering considering how long he’s been at this.

Anyway, outside of the festival circuit I don’t pay too much attention to reviews (and even then I try to paste and forget them) until after I see a movie myself, but as one of a dwindling number of Oscar unknowns, it’s interesting to hear the word on Bones. Sadly, so far it’s not great.

The Guardian’s Xan Brooks dinged it with 2 out of 5 stars complaining that the horror of a 14-year-old’s rape and murder was excised from the book to the screen: “The screen version…is so infuriatingly coy, and so desperate to preserve the modesty of its soulful victim that it amounts to an ongoing clean-up operation.”

Screen Daily’s Mike Goodridge is a little more charitable but finds the film’s earthly scenes to be more effective than the fantasy stuff:

Peter Jackson’s eagerly awaited film version of Alice Sebold’s bestselling novel is sometimes exquisitely realised, sometimes frustratingly uneven. Sebold’s time-spanning story – taking place half on earth, half in heaven, narrated in the first person by a deal girl – was never an easy prospect for adaptation, and Jackson can’t quite capture a fluid structural rhythm for the piece, even while individual sequences and creative decisions are spot-on.”

The Lovely Bones starring Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci and Michael Imperioli opens in limited release on December 11 and it goes wide on December 25.

Filed under: Buzz, Marketing, Reviews
Tags: Mark Wahlberg, Michael Imperioli, Peter Jackson, Rachel Weisz, Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, The Lovely Bones