Susie is a weak protagonist. I mean, when she gets dragged into a hideout by a man and he started laughing evilly, any active protagonist would've bounced by then. Her characterization is inconsistent, one minute she's riding her bike, taking snapshots without a care in the world, another minute, she's sulking ungratefully about a rainbow-colored jingle hat her mom gave her. I know teens are moody but it's like the writers didn't know whether to make her a serious or fun girl.A few other characters we have are Lindsey, Susie's cynical but down-to-earth sister, Buckleay, the usual imaginative child, Lynn, an eccentric yet quirky grandmother and they're really nothing special. In fact, Lynn probably has the most unique personality out of all the characters.With an interesting premise and depiction of afterlife but predictable and melodramatic storyline coupled with awkward characters brings this down to a 3.

This is one of the most poorly directed films I've ever had the displeasure of watching. Please do not waste your time on this one. 2 hours and 15 minutes of Peter Jackson wasting a lot of money on CGI instead of developing a good plot line and developing a story.

There are only mild "spoilers" in this review, so if you haven't seen it yet, you can read this without it ruining the movie for you. This film will always be remembered as the breakout role for the incredible Saoirse Ronan. It will also be remembered as one of the most controversial films ever made. People tend to break off into two camps: Team Salmon or Team Harvey.It starts off innocently enough: a boy-crazy teenage girl in the 1970s is crushing on a man at school. It seems that he is interested in Susie too and despite the disparity in age, she falls for his charms, mostly due to his exchange student allure and suave accent. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that another gentleman is also interested in the nubile teen. His name is Mr. Harvey and he lives in Susie's neighborhood. Unlike the man from school, Mr. Harvey puts in a tremendous amount of effort in an attempt to win the love of Susie Salmon. He builds her an amazing underground clubhouse, complete with all the stuff young people from that era loved. He had beverages such as Coca Cola that he selflessly shared with Susie as they hung out. It became clear that Mr. Harvey, while having great taste in females, was a bit awkward around them. His nervousness around Susie Salmon was evident and she picked up on that. Girls prefer a man with confidence. I also feel that maybe she was turned off because the Coke that Mr. Harvey gave her was warm. I didn't see an ice-filled cooler in the clubhouse anywhere. So I think these factors all led to Susie Salmon losing her patience, which erupted in an unfortunate display of rudeness. Mr. Harvey only had one rule in the clubhouse: Be polite. Susie Salmon broke that rule and the series of events that followed spiraled into one great, big, depressing chain reaction.There are no bad people in The Lovely Bones. True, Susie Salmon came off as being a little narcissistic and immature but she was only 14 years old. Mr. Harvey was socially awkward and made some questionable choices in life but he had a deep desire to be loved and respected. Despite his talents and generosity, it seemed nobody opened up their heart to him.

Grief is a solemn subject for a film, one which requires a delicate touch. A film which hopes to portray grief in a meaningful way should ideally contain good dialogue, meaningful silence, and subtle, well-observed performances. As an example of such a film, I heartily recommend John Cameron Mitchell's "Rabbit Hole." It's quietly engaging, it takes its time, and it's truly and deeply moving.One movie I would not recommend is Peter Jackson's "The Lovely Bones."Jackson is not one for subtlety, or silence, or observation. Each of his films has been a monument to bombast. Jackson loves epic action sequences. He loves audacious CGI landscapes, and wildly soaring musical cues. He loves showmanship and melodrama.I've enjoyed more than one of Jackson's films. His talents have their place. Here, they are egregiously misapplied.Where to start? The problems with "Lovely Bones" are innumerable, starting with the basic premise and spiraling out in every direction.Saoirse Ronan gives perhaps the film's only good performance as Susie Salmon, a teenage girl who is stalked, raped, and murdered by a man who lives in her neighborhood. From a kind of limbo, her spirit looks down on the world and observes her family as they learn to deal with their grief and try to figure out who killed her.The film begins a few days before Susie's murder. From the afterlife, Susie narrates to us the events up to and through the moment of her demise. After her death, we watch as she runs, confused, away from the place of her murder and into a digital special-effects extravaganza known as "the in-between," a kind of limbo where lost souls can look down on their families and get used to the idea that they're actually dead, before moving on to Heaven.From the outset, this film is pitched specifically toward a Christian audience. The words "God" and "Heaven" are pointedly used. And yet, the film doesn't really seem to be interested in engaging with the subject of faith, not beyond the notion that Heaven is beautiful in a sanitized Disney sort of way, and that maybe we eventually all become one, or something like that.An actual grief-stricken parent might have a crisis of faith. That might make for the stuff of a powerful film. The characters in "The Lovely Bones" aren't deep enough for that kind of mourning, and this film isn't interested in that kind of honesty. And so, outside of the film's dumb assumption that God and Heaven do exist, nothing is said about Christianity or the nature of faith whatsoever.Susie's father, Jack, is saddled with a lot of corny dialogue, and is given entire scenes which are utterly thankless. In one, which is inappropriately played as broad comedy, he breathlessly accuses every man he knows of murdering his daughter, as the detective in charge of his case rolls his eyes. The film is certainly going for laughs here -- but why? What an odd and ugly choice.Jack is played by Mark Wahlberg in a performance that comes across as so dopey, so cheerfully clueless, and so oddly flat at times, that it's hard to take any of his scenes seriously.Grandma Lynn, Jack's mother-in-law, swoops-in after Susie's death to help the Salmon family deal with their grief. As written, and as played by Susan Sarandon, Grandma Lynn is a broad comic archetype. Among the squeaky-clean Salmon household, she wears fur coats, chain-smokes, and drinks brandy during the day. She's obviously intended to represent a kind of "sieze the day" philosophy, but as the film presents her, she's merely ridiculous. The film doesn't allow the Salmon family to solve the mystery of Susie's death through natural means. Instead, Ghost Girl communicates with her father, imparting into him a "bad feeling" about the neighbor down the street. Then, Jack develops some photos Susie took just before her death, and -- shock of all shocks! -- the photos, which were taken by Susie as she passed a neighbor's yard, show THE NEIGHBOR in them!! And so, of COURSE Jack realizes that man is the killer.What kind of logic is this? What is the film trying to say? That we should trust our gut-instincts? But what about that earlier scene, where Jack was accusing every man he knew? That was gut-instinct, too! What makes this time any different from that? The film declines to answer such questions. I'm not sure it even realizes it's raising them.Susie's afterlife resembles a TV pharmaceutical commercial -- the kind where people stand in radiantly-green CGI fields, breathing in all the goodness that Advair has brought into their lives. Worse, as Susie meets other girls there, they hang-out in sequences which Jackson seems to have imagined as "the best slumber-party ever!" The girls have their pictures taken in an imaginary New York and see themselves appear on the covers of celebrity-gossip magazines. They go sledding down an impossibly-perfect mountainside in what looks like the set of an Old Navy ad. The overall effect is cheap and gaudy, overtly commercial, as far as one is likely to ever get from depicting a meaningful or poetic afterlife.Even the good aspects of this film are miscalibrated; for instance, Jackson brings a lively visual approach. The colors pop, the camera swoops and swoons around. But this kind of visual zest runs counter to the film's somber subject-matter. The same could be said about the overcooked musical-cues."The Lovely Bones" is one of the worst big-name films I've seen in a long time. It is poorly-conceived on every level. It aims to say something meaningful about grief. What it delivers instead is a pretty lie, a well of platitudes, a "Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul."