Cinemas - Film of the Week - 18/2/10

Feb 18 2010 Runcorn and Widnes Weekly News

THE LOVELY BONES (12A)

THERE is life after death in Peter Jackson’s visually stunning interpretation of the bestseller by Alice Sebold, which proves to be one adaptation too far for the Oscar-winning director of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy and King Kong.

Cutting back and forth between the real world and a colour-saturated heavenly limbo, The Lovely Bones details the efforts of a murdered 14-year-old schoolgirl Susie Salmon (Saorise Ronan) who helps her grieving father (Mark Wahlberg) apprehend her killer (Stanley Tucci) from beyond the grave.

Jackson’s screenplay, co-written with wife Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, is caught in its own limbo, unable to bridge the narrative divide between the corporeal and ethereal planes where the story unfolds.

The Lovely Bones is hamstrung by Wahlberg’s inability to convey a single genuine emotion.

H