If Peter Jackson is correct, and heaven is an endless field of golden corn, hayfever sufferers have an eternity of frustration to look forward to.

And an eternity of frustration is what the Lovely Bones felt like.

Freshly murdered ghost, Saoirse Ronan, prances about between this world and the next dividing her time between living it up in Limbo and watching the family she left behind fall apart. Her murderer is never found, but the shadow of suspicion falls on a creepy neighbour as the bereaved father and sister try to get to the truth behind her killing.

Based on a bestselling book of the same name, The Lovely Bones lacks the novel’s subtle and moving portrayal of death and hope. Jackson’s ‘grand adventure’ style of storytelling jars with the emotional intimacy of a family in dissolution and it doesn’t sit comfortably with the subject matter. The result is a movie that is neither gripping crime drama, nor heart-warming tear-jerker.

While many of the earth-bound scenes are moving, with strong performances put in by Mark Wahlberg and Susan Sarandon as the father and bohemian grandmother, their good work is repeatedly interrupted by returns to the cartoonish ‘inbetween’ world. Like the corny interludes in Home and Away, these frequent heavenly visits always come as a bit of a surprise, and any tension built up is lost in the garish absurdity of Jackson’s paradise.

Irish teen actress, Saoirse Ronan, is perfectly cast as the murdered girl with just the right amount of sensitivity and teenage self-absorption. That is, when her scenes involve acting rather than running around the endless dreamworld landscapes of Limbo. Who would have thought getting to heaven involved so much running?

An annoyingly poignant voice-over is used in an effort to save the story as it flounders under the erratic swings in tone. But despite revealing plot points and character insights, the connection between the dead Susie and her surviving family is never really felt in the action of the film.

Towards the end there are a couple of moments of real suspense as her sister gets closer to the truth, but at 135 minutes, it’s definitely not worth the wait.

By: Joey O’Gorman

Here’s the trailer:

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