Despina Pavlaki

BY MANGLING Alice Sebold’s heavenly novel, The Lovely Bones, director Peter Jackson - better known for The Lord of the Rings trilogy - orchestrates a special-effects extravaganza where some elliptical storytelling would have sufficed.

 

True enough, Sebold does dwell in heaven long enough to lead any director astray, but Jackson is not just any old Hollywood veteran. He’s the former art house genius behind the intensely hallucinatory Heavenly Creatures (1994), which was devoid of any obvious digital technology. 

 

Sixteen years later, his cinephile instincts seem to have completely abandoned him, placing his dearly departed 14-year-old leading lady (Saoirse Ronan) in nearly fluorescent landscapes, doubling as a Technicolor heaven that could only be described as headache-inducing.

 

Back on earth, her parents are struggling to deal with their loss, unable to understand who would be inhuman enough to murder their little girl. Apparently, that would be the neighbour down the street, who spends an appropriate amount of time pretending to be shocked before he starts eyeing his victim’s younger sister. 

 

Dad (Mark Wahlberg) is drenched in despair while mum (Rachel Weisz) escapes to an orange grove, leaving her two remaining children to their own devices. 

 

Enter mother-in-law Susan Sarandon, providing some much-needed comic relief, though nothing can really rid you of the film’s overbearing demeanour. 

 

Whether trippy ghost story or suburban melodrama, The Lovely Bones remains curiously inert despite all the hurt it brings to the table and I, for one, would rather go to hell if heaven really is that boring.