Decent Films Blog
The Lovely Bones
Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones paints an unconvincingly ham-fisted, sometimes ridiculous picture of what happens when someone dies. No, I’m not talking about the film’s attempt to portray the afterlife with kaleidoscopic montages of trippy concept art. I’m willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt, there.
But suspension of belief has its limits. A 14-year-old girl has been brutally assaulted and murdered, and as her grieving father Jack (Mark Wahlberg) lies in bed holding his sobbing wife Abigail (Rachel Weisz), he tearily assures her, “We’re going to get through this. I’ll take care of us. I’m going to make it right.”
Well, perhaps in the throes of new grief, a man might say something that inane. But then, months later, frustrated by the failure of the police to catch the killer, Dad begins stalking the neighbors looking for anything suspicious, and reporting perceived hot tips to the detective on the case — much to the ongoing pain of his wife.
“Herman Stolfas, just across the street,” Jack begins. “Now he appears to be perfectly normal, but Len … the man wears adult diapers.”
