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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Lovely Bones, The

EMAILPRINTDreamWorks Pictures (Paramount)

Lovely Bones, The reviews
42
6.5 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 36 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 57 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Crime  |  Drama  |  Fantasy  |  Horror  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Peter Jackson
Fran Walsh
Philippa Boyens

Directed by: Peter Jackson

Release Date:
Theatrical: December 11, 2009

Running Time: 135 minutes, Color

Origin: USA | UK | New Zealand

Summary

RATING: PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli, and Saoirse Ronan

The Lovely Bones centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal. (Paramount Pictures)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

91

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

As someone new to the material, I found Jackson’s film soulful, respectful, masterful, horrifying, rending and emotionally true. It may not be the Lovely Bones that you have in mind, but it’s a fine and powerful one.

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80

Empire Ian Freer

Like “The Lord Of The Rings,” The Lovely Bones does a fantastic job with revered, complex source material. As terrific on terra firma as it is audacious in its astral plane, it is doubtful we’ll see a more imaginative, courageous film in 2010.

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75

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

Yet so much about The Lovely Bones is so skillfully orchestrated, from the chillingly methodical villainy to the thrillingly paced manhunt, we can accept that we're in the hands of a higher power.

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75

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

All this is conveyed in the remarkable performance of Ronan, an Oscar nominee for Atonement. She and Tucci -- magnificent as a man of uncontrollable impulses -- help Jackson cut a path to a humanity that supersedes life and death.

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70

Time Richard Corliss

When else has the obscenity of child murder been the cause of such gravity and grace?

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63

New York Post Kyle Smith

It's all a gorgeous error, a bonfire of overreach.

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63

Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore

Though properly chilling when it’s supposed to be, it’s a film whose effects, script and performances keep it at arm’s length when it is supposed to be moving.

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60

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Hovers just this side of "Ghost Whisperer" kitsch but remains compulsively watchable thanks to its smart ensemble cast

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60

Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf

It’s a movie that tips toward overkill--even Ronan’s voice is amplified into a weird whisper. More quiet would have helped.

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58

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A sad-but-hopeful, dramatic-but-gentle fairy tale intentionally made less upsetting for teens.

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50

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

For all its successes, Bones remains more crafted than sincere, more meant to look achingly pretty on the screen than to resonate in the heart.

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50

The New Yorker David Denby

The Lovely Bones has been fashioned as a holiday family movie about murder and grief; it’s a thoroughly queasy experience.

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50

Newsweek David Ansen

How do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it.

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50

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Jackson and his team tell a fundamentally different story. It's one that is not without its tension, humor and compelling details. But it's also a simpler, more button-pushing tale that misses the joy and heartbreak of the original.

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50

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

As the murderer, Stanley Tucci is intensely creepy but, like almost everybody else in this movie, he’s more gothic figment than flesh and blood.

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50

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The story told by Jackson's The Lovely Bones is the same as the one related by Sebold, but it lacks the complexity and empathy evident in the book.

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50

Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz

It's a competently made movie - in Jackson's hands it could hardly be anything but - yet rarely a moving one.

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50

Slate Dana Stevens

If The Lovely Bones, at least for this critic, fails, it's certainly not for lack of metaphysical gumption...It's when the movie returns to earthly life, the prosaic world of suburban cul-de-sacs and family relationships, that it falters.

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50

USA Today Claudia Puig

Some books are not meant to be adapted to the big screen. Alice Sebold's best-selling The Lovely Bones falls into that category.

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50

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

By turns warmly sentimental, serial-killer sinister and science-fiction fantastical, The Lovely Bones was an unlikely book to achieve worldwide success. In the film version, those mismatched elements come back to haunt the story, so to speak, making the final product more hit-and-miss than unblemished triumph.

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50

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Jackson has not cast himself well, though. He has slathered the imagery in the wrong kind of wonderment and hyperbole, both on Earth and in heaven.

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50

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The filmmakers’ evident affection for the book expresses itself as a desperate scramble to include as much of it as possible, which leaves the movie feeling both overcrowded and thin.

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50

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The Lovely Bones is difficult viewing, a meticulously crafted experiment that, it turns out, wasn't worth it.

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50

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The book floats sublimely above its dark theme; the movie sinks into the ridiculous.

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40

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

I watched the film in an agitated space between engrossed and aghast.

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40

Variety Todd McCarthy

Jackson undermines solid work from a good cast with show-offy celestial evocations that severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters.

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38

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A deplorable film with this message: If you're a 14-year-old girl who has been brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer, you have a lot to look forward to.

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38

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Ronan, however, transcends the script. She's innocent yet wise, gentle yet forceful. She's the one thing in this picture that shows how great a movie The Lovely Bones might have been, had the people who made it believed in the book with all their hearts.

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38

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The result is almost suffocating: a movie that has been tinkered and fussed with until there is no spontaneity left -- no warmth or life or messiness.

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38

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It doesn't help any that Wahlberg, looking perpetually dumbstruck, is among the clunkiest line-readers working in movies today.

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30

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

How the devastating story of the senseless murder of a 14-year-old could be stripped of emotion is a feat in itself, though one of dubious achievement.

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25

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The Lovely Bones, then, is something special: A spectacular, cringe-inducing failure as both a book adaptation and a film.

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25

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

It leaves audiences in a limbo every bit as torturous as the one the protagonist is in.

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20

Village Voice J. Hoberman

In Jackson's hands, The Lovely Bones is doubly appalling. Part Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," part Fritz Lang's "M," the movie is horrific yet cloying, alternately distended and abrupt, sometimes poignant and often ridiculous.

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20

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

A perfect storm of a movie disaster: You've got good actors fighting a poorly conceived script, under the guidance of a director who can no longer make the distinction between imaginativeness and computer-generated effects. The result is an expensive-looking mess that fails to capture the mood, and the poetry, of its source material.

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20

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Peter Jackson siphoned out all the soulfulness that made the author's combination thriller/afterlife fantasy a best-seller. In its place is a gumball-colored potboiler that's more squalid than truly mournful.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 57 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

D C gave it a9:
Awesome film, u'll either love it or hate it.... reminds on the Pan's Labyrinth days where everyone hated it, yet its one of the most glorified movies of the decade... GO watch Lovely BOnes and decide for yourself... excellent interpretation of the book.

killdarren gave it a0:
I love it when the universe aligns itself. A horrible book is now an even more horrible movie. Jackson let the hype get to his inflated head. This is one of the most blatant show offy films in a long while and I've seen Nine. 2009 might have been one of the worst years for film. Everything was forgettable!

Jake N gave it a4:
Rather boring then thrilling. All the big flowers and pretty colors are neither beautiful nor entertaining. The acting is absolutely horrible. Let's just put it this way. 'The Lovely Bones' is a total mess that fell out of the sky. I am going to have to say that isn't a bad movie. Though it is pretty lame. The storyline isn't good, but it's not terrible. So it's just an-a-okay story. The beginning isn't very bad, but then it just goes to flaw after flaw after flaw after flaw. Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz (who play the parnets of Susie Salmon) are the ones with the worst acting in the movie. Also Stanley Tucci does a poor job with his acting as well. There mostly the whole cast of the movie aren't very good with their acting. Oh and all the girls in the 'In Between World', don't get me started with their acting. With the cast awful acting also makes 'The Lovely Bones' not very thrilling. I don't even understand how a movie with bad acting like that could be called thriller at all. All the pretty stuff in the 'In Between World' does not make you want to go 'Whoa!' with all of the acting and random things happening. I also should bring that random things happen and come out of nowhere. It's almost to painful to watch.

Alex A gave it a4:
This movie was just NO. Honestly, try as the actors may to save the film, the plot was pretty damned from the start. WHOLLY predictable, which isn't all that bad when the cast do a good job; HOWEVER, the ending Peter Jackson gave this film ruined it for me. I felt so dam FRUSTRATED at the end of the film. An insult to the brilliant mind of Peter Jackson, who must have tried directing this in his sleep. Clap the cast for a good job though.

Gavin Q. gave it a3:
Awful movie. Only gets 3 because of Saoirse Ronan. Wahlberg was terrible.

Omar D. gave it a9:
The Lovely Bones was a truly awesome event. I felt that the way Jackson transitioned between the events in the real world and Susie in the in-between really showed the emotional connection between the characters. Also I've noted that many critics are citing the exclusion of the highly graphic rape scene and Jackson's indirect portrayal of the murder as being a bad thing. Um...no. I'll put it this way: Hitchcock would be pleased with how it was handled. I also feel that the exclusion of Rachel Weiss' character's extramarital affair with the investigating detective only helped to keep the film focused, especially considering her performance was arguably one of the weakest.

Dan E gave it a0:
This is the worst movie I have ever seen...ever. About a third of the way through I found myself hoping that it would just end. There is little to no character development and many scenes are drawn out and incoherent. This movie could easily have forty to fifty minutes cut out with no loss in continuity. Save your money and your time. Read the book.

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