The Lovely Bones - Not quite sure what happened here. I was pretty compelled for the first 40 minutes or so; it was decent and the leading girl with the big blue eyes seemed like a good enough character, but just about everything after her murder (don't worry, that's not a spoiler) was not very good at all. The film just nose-dived in quality and never quite recovered. First of all: the CGI simply didn't work on any level. It looked tacky and these sequences were an annoying distraction if anything - like an idea half-executed which is sort of how I'd describe the entire film. You get the feeling Peter Jackson thought he was making a much better film than it actually turned out; a hodge-podge of ideas leaving it with no real strength.
Leading girl as I said was good but then a bit of a non-entity (hurr hurr) for about the last half. Wahlberg was his consistent self (that is to say he was consistently rubbish), Weisz didn't really seem interested and Susan Sarandon, while okay, fluttered in and out so much it's hard to say what mark, if any, she left. Best performance obviously from Stanley Tucci as the serial killer. CGI aside, I thought it at least looked nice.
The plot was low on anything that interesting. Found the whole kick-starting of
Tucci's character coming under suspicion to be a little contrived (
the daughter just didn't like the look of him). And apart from the actual scene leading up to the murder, it was absent on tension or atmosphere. The only deviation in the last hour or so from the meandering story coming in the form of your typical and overused sequence involving a character searching through the killer's home while he's away and OH MY GOD HE'S COME BACK HOME GETTHEFUCKOUTOFTHERE. There were moments that were potentially touching, but the lack of character development (
the girl getting to kiss the guy at the end providing nothing emotionally), poor acting (Wahlberg) and mawkish sentimentality (the soundtrack) spoilt it.
I just wish it had been a little darker. Considering its premise (which I really like the idea of), Jackson never really made much of it. There were flashes here and there, but it felt tame. And before I stop writing, that ending, well, what do you say to an ending like that? It was baaaaaad.
Good start but poor after that. Annoying as the film had promise and perhaps under another director it'd have succeeded.
3/10