Bones has little meat

There are certain undeniable facts that must be listed off before any substantive review of The Lovely Bones can be written.

First, Mark Wahlberg is not the kind of actor who will have an easy time gaining widespread approval from popular audiences or movie critics. Occasionally he shows up in decent movies like The Departed but mostly I still think of him as a Calvin Klein underwear model and former lead singer of the Funky Bunch.

Second, Stanley Tucci is the kind of great character actor who should get more credit for his work. He has an uncanny ability to immerse himself in his roles and he makes most movies better for his participation.

And then there’s Saoirse Ronan. She’s young but already has an Oscar nomination on her rĂ©sumĂ© thanks to Atonement. It won’t be her last. She is bright-eyed with a wonderfully expressive face and a lovely voice with just the hint of a Celtic lilt despite her general prowess with other dialects. Sadly, that beautiful voice becomes a breathy nuisance with the pervasive voice-over narration throughout this two-hour-plus film. I haven’t read Alice Sebold’s novel but many people see it as a kind of unfilmable story. Naturally most other such stories eventually get the movie treatment with the same reliance on voice-over to provide both the main character’s insight and a sense of structure that may not have existed otherwise. Revered screenwriting coach Robert McKee says that voice-over is the sign of a lazy writer. I agree.

Otherwise this reminded me a whole lot of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that in turn reminded me of Forrest Gump. It’s a touching and somewhat tragic tale but extremely well produced with seamless special effects. Ronan plays Susie Salmon, a 14-year-old girl who is murdered in 1973 by a man from her neighbourhood. While her family suffers what must be anyone’s worst nightmare, Salmon finds herself in the afterlife which comes across as more of an after-party except that she is still trying to make contact with the living to help them figure out who her murderer is.

I can’t help but feel somewhat emotionally manipulated by such stories. It’s completely gut-wrenching to imagine the horror and then alternately inspiring to think that this girl’s spirit is able to find peace with her life cut short. I thought it would be more of a supernatural detective story with an immensely satisfying ending but the reality of it is more like being in purgatory itself — it’s neither one thing or the other and its quality is hard to judge.

There was a great deal that I liked about the movie, not the least of which was Tucci. He came across as the creepiest normal guy on the block but looked like a taller Hitler and with more cotton in his cheeks than Marlon Brando doing Vito Corleone. Susan Sarandon had a smaller supporting role as the grandmother that everybody wishes that they had: a chain-smoking alcoholic but incredibly fun and cool to be around. The imaginative visions of Susie’s adventures on her way to heaven are truly magnificent.

Despite these pros, the cons still weigh heavier in my mind. Ronan cries more in two hours than some people do their whole lives. I wish Rachel Weisz had a greater part so that she could better utilize her talents and expressive range. Mostly though it’s the tone of the whole film, along with some major technical flaws like how one man can singlehandedly transport a massive safe. I can’t imagine what it would be like to watch this from the perspective of someone who has experienced this tragedy in life but it put me off. Director Peter Jackson is generally a good storyteller but I think his success with the Lord of the Rings trilogy has left him with a superiority complex. He should stick to pure fantasy that has few to no ties to the real world as we know it. I left the theatre feeling like I had been bombarded with sappy sentimentality and pretty images but not much else.