The Lovely Bones is Better than Avatar

I screened THE LOVELY BONES on Friday. First of all, I have never read the book and didn’t really know anything about the movie going in other than it was a Peter Jackson project. The other thing that I knew was that the movie got really crappy reviews, and I mean really crappy. After seeing the movie for myself I don’t understand why. I am going to chalk it up to a bunch of people who loved the book were extremely disappointed with the movie.



What did I think about it? I liked it. Some of the depictions of heaven were a little over the top and just downright weird (buttery dancing scene anyone?) and I am guessing that soured a lot of would-be-fans right there. The one thing Jackson nailed that no one can complain about was the suspense scenes. They were very well done and really did keep me on the edge of my seat.

If I hadn't known this was a Peter Jackson film going into it, I would have figured it out very quickly. There were some classic Jackson shots directly out of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. By that I mean, just the way the characters were framed in the shot, their head movements towards the camera, focus, pacing, etc. were done EXACTLY the same as in his other movies.

Though I did like it, I didn’t love this movie but I can assure you it was far better than AVATAR, which was the last movie I saw in a theater. AVATAR was supposed to be about these really awesome effects but I thought the effects in THE LOVELY BONES absolutely blew AVATAR away, not to mention the art and creativity was so much better. How does something new and original get such poor reviews and a complete copy of another movie do so well (see Avatar and Pocahontas earlier post)? If you’re going to waste your money on AVATAR then you better give THE LOVELY BONES a try, you might be pleasantly surprised as I was.