"The Lovely Bones" Movie Trailer Review

By our guest blogger, Lauren Bull

“The Lovely Bones” is not just based on the novel by Alice Sebold--it is based on the incredibly popular novel by Alice Sebold. That distinction can mean something when images of characters and places have already been dreamed up by a substantial number of readers. In those personal films, the lead is definitely taller or shorter, the house a much darker shade of green, and that amazing line from the last chapter wasn’t cut. Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether the movie will be just like the one in your head, but whether it can make you forget that it isn’t.

The premise is a pretty bleak one. On December 6, 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is raped, murdered and dismembered by her neighbor, Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci). Her parents, Abigail and Jack (Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg), are not only dealt the blow of her disappearance, but also have to take two other hits--neither the body nor the killer has been found. Given Harvey’s strange behavior and proximity (as well as his general creepster qualities), Jack becomes convinced of his guilt, and with the help of his surviving daughter (Rose McIver), tries to build a case against him. Susie is still very much a part of the action, watching and narrating from the “in between” heaven she has created.

This is a good lineup. The casting of Ronan seems inspired given that powerful, eerie quality she demonstrated in “Atonement.” Tucci is someone I would watch in just about anything, and these shadowy and repetitive shots of him, which then speed up to a frenzied close-up near the trailer’s end, reveal a character also stuck in an in between world--hidden in the dark and right in plain sight. Susan Sarandon also appears as Grandma Lynn, and it looks as if the role of the opinionated, Mame-like matriarch could be the perfect fit for her.

Peter Jackson is at the helm here, and it will be interesting to experience his interpretation of the book’s events, script-wise and visually. The colors here are pretty lush and striking. The heaven Susie occupies is not another Earth, nor a bed of white clouds, but more like some sort of art lover’s video game, which seems like it will be either dazzling or really distracting. With any luck, there will be the right balance of heaven and Earth, of murder-mystery and fantasy, not because that’s how it happened in the book, but because with these actors, it would make for a great movie.

View the trailer for "The Lovely Bones" below. Thoughts?