Director Peter Jackson's latest, "The Lovely Bones," has been out in the United States for a while now, and the critics have been pretty merciless. It relies too much on special effects, it lacks key elements of the novel it's based on (Alice Sebold's best seller), some of the performances fail to connect . . . the charges go on and on, and it almost seems like buyer's remorse from the very same people who overhyped Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy while overlooking these same flaws.
Yes, "The Lovely Bones" is an imperfect film, but the reason the missteps are so jarring is because for most of the time, Jackson weaves an intoxicating spell — mixing suspense, wistful melancholy and mystical magic realism. He attempts to return to the girly-gothic style of his prefame arthouse hit, "Heavenly Creatures," but without leaving behind the popcorn CGI spectacle that he's now known for, and the tension between these two aims is never entirely resolved.
"My name is Salmon, like the fish. First name, Susie. I was 14 years old when I was murdered on December 6th, 1973." With these matter-of-fact lines, "The Lovely Bones" jumps right into its story of a girl looking back from the afterlife on her last days and their aftermath. It's a moving film about loss and memory, with girly innocence stuffed up against the tragedy of unexpected death, all combined with specific nostalgia for a moment in time (the early '70s).