Yes, this is a book review site and the title of this post clearly says “The Movie,” but I have to venture into book-to-film territory for a moment. I am a big fan of books being turned into movies because I think it increases and widens the exposure that certain books achieve when they are adapted into films. However, last night I watched THE LOVELY BONES and was so disappointed! I read the book when it first came out and love, love, loved it. It was haunting and heartbreaking, mysterious and well-written. The movie was none of these things. The movie took a beautiful book and tried to turn it into some weird psychedelic fantasy movie (probably because Peter Jackson of The Lord of the Rings fame directed this film) that took all the complexities of the book and erased them. There were some truly horrendous scenes where Susie is stuck in the “in between” which, in Jackson’s hands, is apparently an animated episode of The Partridge Family.
I’m not alone in my distaste for this adaptation. Here is what NPR said when the movie was released this winter.
Sitting through Peter Jackson’s film of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones is an ordeal. I’m not talking about the subject. The book opens with the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl, so even a good adaptation would be an ordeal. But Jackson’s adolescent New Age computer-generated fantasyland is an excruciating fusion of the novel’s primal trauma and his own sensibility, which is more at home with juvenile, male-dominated Lord of the Ringsepics. There isn’t a second that rings true – on any level.
All I can say is, if you haven’t read the book and made the mistake of seeing this movie first, go back and read the book! You will not be disappointed.
